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To: Barry Goldwater
When charge moves the electric field is no longer purely coulombic, it now has a motional term (the field actually increases but is still non radiating). Does the gravity field have a corresponding increase toowhen the mass moves? If the mass is accelerated or changes density, it generates a radiation field. Is the radiation field transverse and does it have two components corresponding to electric and magnetic field?

I don't completely understand what you're saying, here. (The statement "the field actually increases but is still non radiating" is probably wrong.) There is a gravitomagnetic effect caused by special relativity, but it's pretty subtle because, unlike electromagnetic field, the gravitational field has no dipole moment.

All orbiting charge does not radiate, for example the electron orbiting the atom. What causes the earth to radiate or not radiate when it orbits the sun?

Electrons don't always radiate when they orbit around the atom because they're hard up against the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle; there's no lower energy state available. There is no such consideration when it comes to the Earth in its orbit. It will radiate gravitational waves continuously.

What gives the phase quadrature components so it doesn't radiate? Or what are the in phase components to give the radiation? Gravity then must have a wavelength and phase in order to radiate.

Again, I don't really understand what you're saying. "Gravity" doesn't have a wavelength, as it's a field. (Geek alert: if gravity can be described by a quantum field theory, then the field could be decomposed into an infinite superposition of quantized virtual gravitational waves, just as the EM field can be described as an infinite series of virtual photons. But that doesn't mean that the field would in any sense have a wavelength.) Gravitational waves--that is, changes in the gravitational field--would have definite wavelengths. It's a whole new spectrum.

The difficulty in detecting gravitational waves is primarily due to their long wavelengths. For example, the gravitational waves radiated by the Earth have a wavelength of exactly one lightyear, because it takes the Earth exactly one year to complete one cycle. Measuring such a wave would require an apparatus of about that scale. LIGO is designed to measure much shorter wavelengths, but the processes that generate gravitational waves with such a short wavelength are few and rare.

58 posted on 10/30/2002 7:59:56 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Physicist
1. When an electron has velocity the total electric field increases over that of a stationary electron. This total field is non radiating. Check your freshman physics texts. A moving charge is a current, the equation E = J sigma (a form of ohm's law) may help you remember.

2. Hiesenbergs uncertainty principle relates the uncertainty of measurement between a particles momentum and position. A radiation field, by definition is uncoupled from its source. I don't see how the uncertainty principle applies, especially to a field.

3. If Cavendish could measure g with small lead spheres over 100 years ago, certainly today's physicists could produce gravity waves on the orders of tens of kilohertz and measure them. Also as the frequency of the wave increases so would its radiated intensity, making the measurement very easy.

4. Wouldn't gravity waves cause an effect similar to the Lorentz contraction and hence could never be measured?
60 posted on 10/30/2002 1:10:37 PM PST by Barry Goldwater
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