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Posted on 11/24/2006 8:35:25 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
So is everything else.
Actually when that happens you get a neutron star. Black holes require even more.
Theory is not a lower rung of a ladder leading to a top rung called fact.
Theory and facts are two different things.
Facts are what we measure.
Theories are what we create to explain the facts.
Once a theory is well-accepted it doesn't become a fact, it just becomes a well-accepted theory.
The theory of quantum mechanics --- which explains the observations of the sub-atomic world better than any theory in science explains anything (its prediction rate is unmatched) --- is still a theory. Despite it's absolutely fantastic success, it has not morphed into a fact. Theories don't do that.
If you care to go LOOK, the earth's response to the sun's gravitational pull is NOT 8 minutes c-retarded, it is instantaneous : 149,000,000 km/9 x 10^16 km/sec = about a billionth of a second. Thus "gravity" is fermions bose-bonded/flux-linked by matter waves in a capacitance well, much like cooper pair electrons in superconductivity.Where are you getting this? I've read just the opposite, that gravity does travel at the speed of light and that if the sun were to somehow magically disappear in an instant, the earth would continue blissfully on its orbit for another 8 minutes before sailing off on a tangent away from the gradually decaying solar system.
Well thanks for clearing that up.
I've been laying awake nights worrying about that one.
L
Since some have noted that our Universe could be the inside of a black hole, I wonder if any black holes with no spin have been observed.
I don't know if that is likely. There could be something somewhere that isn't spinning relative to the universe, but so far everything seems to be spinning except the universe itself.
By saying an 8 minute delay you infer that gravity waves travel at c. Very careful astronomical measurements have shown NO 8 minute delay, it is virtually instantaneous. Google : DeBroglie - MATTER WAVES. His formula for the speed of matter waves is U=c^2/v; immediately after the discovery of matter waves that are the OTHER HALF of fermions, the particles you and the world are made of, the relativists(Einstein et al)came up with the group/phase cover story to "explain" the supraluminal c^2 term, and consigned DeBroglie to the crazy aunt alice category.......Anyway, you really have to know your Quantum Mechanics to discuss this intelligently.
I know, you're being sarcastic, and yet you are missing something of great importance, it's your loss.
By Dr David WhitehouseAnyway, you really have to follow the news in astronomy to discuss this intelligently.
BBC News Online science editor
The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time, revealing that it does indeed travel at the speed of light.It means that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has passed yet another test with flying colours.
The measurement was made by Ed Fomalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri, in Columbia, both US.
Writing in New Scientist magazine, they say: "We became the first two people to know the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature."
Higher dimensions
Isaac Newton believed the influence of gravity was instantaneous. Later, Albert Einstein assumed it travelled at the speed of light and built his 1915 General Theory of Relativity around that assumption.
If gravity travelled at the speed of light it would mean that if the Sun suddenly vanished from the Solar System, the Earth would remain in orbit for about eight minutes - the time taken for light to travel from the star to our planet. Then, in the absence of gravity, Earth would move off in a straight line.
Modern researchers say that knowing the speed of gravity is important in the study of branches of cosmology where the Universe has more spatial dimensions than the usual three.
Some of those theories suggest that gravity could take a short cut through higher dimensions and so appear to travel faster than the speed of light.
Jupiter's help
To measure gravity's velocity, Kopeikin determined that it could be determined with the help of the planet Jupiter, if its mass and velocity were known.
The perfect opportunity arose in September 2002, when Jupiter passed in front of a quasar - a distant, very active galaxy - that emits radio waves.
Fomalont and Kopeikin combined observations from a series of radio telescopes to measure the apparent change in the quasar's position as the gravitational field of Jupiter bent the passing radio waves.
From the observations the researchers determined that that gravity does indeed move at the same speed as light.
The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time. The landmark experiment shows that it travels at the speed of light, meaning that Einstein's general theory of relativity has passed another test with flying colours.Fomalont and Kopeikin combined observations from a series of radio telescopes across the Earth to measure the apparent change in the quasar's position as the gravitational field of Jupiter bent the passing radio waves.
From that they worked out that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 0.95 times light speed, but with a large error margin of plus or minus 0.25.
By the way, you can prove a theory wrong with revised measurements, but you can't prove measurements wrong with a revised theory!
In logic class this(nasa)is called the appeal-to-authority fallacy. Do you even know what MATTER WAVES are? Have you ever even heard of Louis De Broglie and the Quantum Mechanical revolution of the 1920's? Have you seen this equation by Feynman : E = mc^2 = hw where h is the quantum and w is DeBroglie's wave number? Have you never heard about quantum entanglement at supraluminal velocities?......You see(pun), photons are BOSONS and as particles move at c along certain EM wavelengths, the STUFF you're made of is FERMIONS and move as c x c mass-area(mv^2/2), or c x c momentum-line(9 x 10^16 km/sec), in De Broglie's U=c^2/v equation. Thus the quasar-jupiter experiment/measurement is still dealing with c-limit bose-photons. Do you have an old physics book around with a chapter on MATTER WAVES?.....Also, please explain why "delta momentum" and "rest mass" are oxymorons...
Sunlight strikes the earth at an angle of 19 seconds of arc. That is because the earth moves that far during the eight minutes the light is flying. That angle causes a small pressure that tends to slow the earth, although not much. If gravity took that long to act on the earth, it would increase the earth's speed and the orbital radius would double every 1,200 years. This has not been observed, so we think there is no such angle. (It's called "aberration".) Any theory that determines any finite speed of gravity will have to explain that observation.
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