GM Jackson Physics and Mathematics: August 2020

Friday, August 14, 2020

The Beautiful Destruction of the Graviton

ABSTRACT:

In his paper titled "Aberration and the Speed of Gravity," S. Carlip argues that gravity propagates at light speed, and, its "action at a distance" and the lack of observed aberration is canceled by velocity dependent interactions. However, the underlying assumption of his thesis is that gravity is caused by gravitational radiation propagating at light speed. Another assumption held by much of the physics community is the quantization of gravitational waves will lead to a spin-2 massless particle known as the graviton. In this paper, I show why gravitational waves and gravitons are not the root cause of gravity. Gravity emerges from an entangled relationship between spacetime and matter.

Modern physics has two conflicting ideas: 1. gravity propagates at light speed, and 2. the equivalence principle. Why are these two ideas in conflict? The first proposes that gravity works in the following manner: a person holds a pen in his hand and drops it. Before it hits the floor, however, the floor must emit gravitons that propagate at c to create a field of gravity, so the pen can receive the gravitational information; otherwise, the pen won't fall.

The second idea is often set forth using a thought experiment where the person holding the pen is in a spaceship. The thrust of the engines cause the floor to accelerate toward the pen when the pen is dropped; otherwise, the pen would float freely in space and never make contact with the floor. In this scenario, no gravitons or gravitational field are needed. The floor is on a collision course with the pen and does not need to send a signal to the pen to let it know it's coming. According to Einstein, this is indistinguishable from gravity. Therefore, this great idea and the one that precedes it create a paradox: the first idea implies a force is causing the pen to fall, so a force-carrying particle is necessary. The second idea implies there is no force.

That begs the question: does gravity require gravitons? Let's examine what may be a source of gravitons and strong evidence that gravity's velocity is c: gravitational waves. Equation 2 below is a gravitational-wave equation:

From equation 2 we derive equation 3 which emphasizes that c is a component of rest-mass energy and not propagation speed.

Does gravity exist if there are no gravitational waves? To find out, we take angular frequency to zero. The time (t') it takes for no waves to propagate a distance r is also zero. The final result is equation 5:

Where there are no gravitational waves there is zero angular frequency and zero strain measured at distance r, but on the left side of equation 5 we see Newtonian gravity is not zero. Thus, the magnitude of gravitational acceleration does not depend on the magnitude of gravitational waves nor their quanta. Further, a zero time delay (t') implies action at a distance.

A comparison between electric waves and gravitational waves reveals why photons are observable and gravitons are not. The wave equation i below represents an electric field (photons) propagating at c. Equations ii through iv demonstrate how the removal of the electric field (photons) leads to no electromagnetic force:

By contrast, if the gravitational field (gravitons) is removed, Newtonian gravity still exists:

What's been shown so far is not surprising when you consider problems surrounding the hypothetical graviton:

1. Since electromagnetic force is around 10³⁷ times greater than gravity, one might imagine a graviton with 10³⁷ times the Compton wavelength of an electron. The graviton's wavelength would span much of the known universe! Not exactly quantum scale.

2. Or, one could imagine one graviton (with the same Compton wavelength as an electron and same speed as a photon) per 10³⁷ photons. If it takes 10³⁷ photons one second to interact with X number of atoms, the graviton would take 10³⁷ seconds to interact with X number of atoms--many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe! Further, each graviton interaction would have the same strength as a photon interaction or electromagnetic force.

3. One expects gravitons to spread out to form a field. It is not clear how the gravitons of a black hole can escape each other (if they have a light-speed limit) and not clump together due to mutual attraction (caused by their spin, angular momentum, mass-energy equivalence, etc.).

4. Gravitational wave wavelengths are inconsistent with hypothetical graviton wavelengths.

5. There's a renormalization problem.

6. The graviton has never been observed.

Assuming gravitons are not the root cause of gravity, what exactly is? If we begin with the spacetime metric (equation 6), we can derive equations 9 and 10 below:

Imagine, for the sake of argument, there is a graviton propagating at velocity c. Equation 9 shows if the graviton's energy (E) changes, the spacetime must also change instantaneously; otherwise the constant c would have a different value during the time it takes the graviton to emit another graviton which then transports information to surrounding spacetime. In other words, if the speed of gravity is limited to c, there would be a time lag where c is no longer c! The same holds for Planck's reduced constant at equation 10. The very constants physics relies on would fail to be constant if gravity is required to propagate an information-carrying particle no faster than c.

A careful examination of equation 9 reveals the graviton's energy, when divided by Planck's constant, has the same dimension as frequency, and the spacetime has the same dimension as wavelength. Frequency and wavelength have an entangled relationship. If you measure the value of one, you instantaneously know the value of the other.

In the case of our graviton, a change in its energy instantaneously updates its surrounding spacetime. Our graviton does not need to emit a graviton--and neither does any particle, planet, star, or black hole.

Thus, if the graviton is ever discovered, it is not the root cause of gravity. Gravity is the result of an entangled relationship between matter and spacetime. Matter has a certain energy and moves in certain ways because of a certain configuration of spacetime, and spacetime has a certain configuration because matter has a certain energy and moves in certain ways. Like frequency and wavelength, one does not exist without the other. This new hypothesis is consistent with "action at a distance" observations but inconsistent with the highly contraversial Jovian deflection experiment (see endnote 22).