Comments on: Two views on gravity Part 1: Particle Zoo

By: tax attorney

tax attorney — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:15:13 +0000

My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!

By: Gord Davison

Gord Davison — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:01:02 +0000

Clear explaination. I think that they will never find the graviton. After studying the particle zoo and reading about string theory I think that there is strong evidence that gravity is not a force at all.

I think that gravity is caused by the distortion of time. This distortion generates a dv/dt which is an acceleration, without motion, giving us the ‘a’ in the formula Force equals mass times accelleration thereby generating the force of gravity.

By: Carnival of SpaceÂ¬â€ #141 | Starry Critters

Carnival of SpaceÂ¬â€ #141 | Starry Critters — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:26:59 +0000

[...] of spacey-timiness, StarStryÂ¬â‰ der, Pamela Gay talks of annoyÂ¬â‰ ance and accepÂ¬â‰ tance of [...]

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:49:56 +0000

i cant help but feel that gravity and wave particle duality are the first bit of insight into alternate universes,

like the first time realizing how many types of light we cannot see,

the more i think about it, gravity, like wave particle duality must be part of some sort of webway, in the sense that i dont think its necessarily travelling the speed of light or some insane speed, but that its more like stocking a store shelf with cans,

if you have a full shelf with cans and wish to put another can on this shelf, you must unavoidable push another can off the other side taking its place,

so i guess what im saying is that perhaps some sort of displacement propertys in effect with what must be a cool set of new rules and laws, i couldnt begin to say what math would be required but, with all the empty space in between atoms, thier is alot of room for parallel universe types. maybe im way off but great article.

regardless im looking forward to part 2!!!!

keep up the good work!

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:13:48 +0000

Oops, wherever I said gluon in above post, I meant graviton. Doh!

By: Carl

Carl — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:55:57 +0000

Understand.
I was thinking of aberration? – the driving through a rainstorm effect, where all the raindrops appear to be coming directly at you.
At relativistic speeds most of the photons appear to be coming from in front of you.
Wondered if this also might apply to gravitons?
Seems like there ought to be a thought experiment in there somewhere!
Have a great day and thanks again for your efforts.

By: pamela

pamela — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:48:39 +0000

Hi Carl: Gravitons would have no mass, so you don’t need to worry about mass related relativistic effects. The rest of the time, the can often just be treated like photons.

By: Xerxes

Xerxes — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:22:41 +0000

You know, if you’re not too hung up about renormalizability, it’s perfectly ok to throw in a spin-2 graviton in the most naive way. If you toss in N=8 SuSy, you might even get your renormalizability back.

By: Carl

Carl — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:11:21 +0000

Thanks once more for being a great communicator!
Gravity has always been an interest. What hits me on the graviton-particle theory is the idea of these moving at light speed. This would seem to imply that relativity should apply. Is there any evidence of this?

By: Todd Gonzales

Todd Gonzales — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:08:57 +0000

I believe this is what so interests me in the science of Astronomy, such a huge spectrum of unknown knowledge. It’s very exciting to know that tomorrow the universe as you know it could be completely and utterly different. I can’t help but wonder what it must of felt like when those spiral nebulas turned out to be separate galaxies…..a feeling that I anticipate will be a 100 fold when we figure out the real story behind gravity. My skin tingles. Great article!

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:56:45 +0000

Nice summary of the history of particle theory!

I agree with wanting to hang on to the geometrical picture of gravity, and that the picture of all these bosons being exchanged all overthe place seems messy. The thing is, neither is correct, they are both simple ways of us getting our heads around the maths in terms of approximations that work in different situations. The reality is something else, beyond our ability to imagine in a way related to our everyday experience.

However, though I’m no expert in the details, there does seem to be hope for geometry. Although it would be nice to have all forces mediated by particles in the same way, the gluon does not naturally appear in our Standard Model of particle theory. It seems you have to go beyond thinking of point particles, for example in string theory, where things that look like gluons do naturally arise. Although I believe strong theory has a whole set of other difficulties to overcome, what’s interesting is that the physics are, at least partly, determined by the way in which (11-or-so-dimensional) space is all wrapped up. So it may ultimately all come down to geometry again!