Physics
Scientific paper
Sep 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998dda....30.1004v&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #30, #10.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1146
Physics
Scientific paper
If gravity from the Sun propagated outward at the speed of light, the transmission delay would progressively increase the angular momentum of bodies orbiting the Sun at so great a rate that orbital radii would double in about 1000 revolutions. Direct measurements of the directions of bodies and their accelerations show that, while light of any wavelength undergoes aberration as an immediate consequence of its finite speed, gravity has no such aberration or propagation delay at a detectable level. Dynamical studies of binary pulsars show that not only the position and velocity of a source of gravity are anticipated without light-time delay, but accelerations of the source are anticipated as well. Indeed, Newton's universal law of gravity, to which general relativity is supposed to reduce in the low-velocity, weak-field limit, requires infinite propagation speed for gravity. These paradoxes are supposed to be explained by general relativity's curved spacetime interpretation of gravity. Yet that interpretation leads to new, equally unresolvable paradoxes, especially acute in the case of binary black holes. Moreover, that interpretation is in conflict with results from neutron interferometer experiments. One resolution of the paradoxes is to interpret the experiments literally, and from them deduce that the speed of propagation of gravitational force is at least 2 x 10(10) c. Although this is inconsistent with the Einstein interpretation of special relativity, it is consistent with the Lorentzian variant of that theory. This subtle alteration in our thinking about what is allowed under the laws of physics has several beneficial consequences. Examples are the locality dilemma of quantum mechanics and the question of the existence of singularities in nature ("black holes").
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