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    The Speed of Gravity

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    The Speed of Gravity

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    Alternative theory on Speed of Gravity

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    The Speed of Gravity

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    mashareco
    Alternative theory on Speed of Gravity

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    The Speed of Gravity


    If our Sun were suddenly to cease to exist would Earth immediately
    break from its orbit and
    move in a straight line or would it spend the
    next eight minutes circling a non-existent star?

    The answer to this depends upon whether you consider the effects of
    gravity to be
    instantaneous or delayed.  If gravity propagated
    at infinite speed, Earth would immediately
    break from its orbit, and
    this would be despite us seeing sunlight for the next 8.3
    minutes. 
    But if gravity propagated at a finite speed, such as
    the speed of light, Earth would continue
    along its orbit path for as
    long the Sun remained visible.

    According to mainstream belief, gravity moves at light speed, meaning


    that its effects will be
    delayed.  But there’s a competing
    school of thought that argues gravity must either move at
    infinite
    speed or at a speed much-much faster than light.  The reason
    for proffering this is
    that planetary motion requires it for our Solar
    System to be stable.

    The argument goes like this.  Suppose we have two identical


    bodies orbiting each other in a
    perfectly circular orbit as shown:

    They orbit clockwise around a barycentre that’s in the exact


    middle.  There are two forces at
    work.  The first is
    the gravitational force pulling them together and the second is the
    centrifugal force pulling them apart.

    In order to retain their perfect circular orbit it is necessary for


    these forces to be equal in
    magnitude, opposite in direction, and
    perpendicular (at right-angles) to the direction of
    motion. 
    If the directions were not like this the bodies would either spiral
    inwards or
    outwards.

    But why would the force directions not be opposite?


    Whenever making predictions about gravity, it is often assumed to be


    instantaneous, which is
    to say it is assumed to travel at an infinite
    speed.  The above diagram also makes this
    assumption and has
    the direction of gravitational force pointing directly back at the
    other
    body.

    But if gravity moved at finite speed this wouldn’t be


    correct.  Because in the time it took for
    gravity to reach the
    other side, the body that emitted the gravity would have moved
    forward.  Instead, each would see an earlier image of where
    the other one was.  This diagram
    shows the idea:
    Here each body sees a ‘ghost image’ of the other body, where the
    ‘ghost’ corresponds to an
    earlier location.  This suggests the
    gravitational force must be coming from that location
    rather than the
    location of where the other body currently is.  So the
    centrifugal force will still
    be directly outward but the gravitational
    force will be at a slight angle.  This means there will
    now be
    a net force very mildly in the direction of travel.  This will
    cause the bodies to spiral
    slowly outwards:

    In the case where the bodies are of unequal mass, both bodies will be
    orbiting a shared
    barycentre and the problem would still
    occur.  Thus we should likewise expect the Sun and
    Jupiter to
    spiral apart, followed by the other planets, leading to the Solar
    System’s
    destruction.

    Tom Van Flandern

    This argument was put forward by the late Thomas Van Flandern and can
    be found here [1]. 
    Based on this he calculated that, in order
    to explain the Solar System’s stability, gravity must
    propagate at at
    least 2x1010c, i.e. 20 billion times faster than
    light.   And for all we know it
    may well propagate at
    infinite speed allowing it to act instantaneously over any distance.

    If gravity really does move that fast it offers exciting opportunities


    for faster-than-light
    communication.  On the other hand it
    also seems unbelievable; especially the idea that it
    could be
    instantaneous.

    Two Archers
    But there’s a fault with the above reasoning in that it fails to take
    into account the motion of
    the body emitting the gravity. 
    This can be demonstrated as follows.

    Two archers stand on opposing sides of a rotating turntable. 


    Each has a bow and arrow and
    is trying to hit the other
    archer.  Initially they aim directly at where their opponent
    is standing
    as shown:

    The turntable is rotating clockwise.  If the archers release


    their arrows with this aim they face
    two problems.  The first
    is that when the arrow arrives at the other side, the target will have
    moved.  The second is that the person firing the arrow is
    moving sideways and this motion
    will be applied to the arrow. 
    The end result will be this:

    Not only do the arrows miss their target, they also miss the location
    they were aimed at.

    In order to compensate for this, each archer must aim to his right as
    shown:
    When the arrows are released, they will hit their target like this

    Notice how the arrows point back at the archer that fired them.

    Now suppose the arrows applied a force to their target and the force
    direction was along the
    line that the arrows were pointing. 
    The archers would feel a force aiming directly away from
    where they now
    saw their opponent.  And this would be despite both of them
    having moved
    from the spot where the arrows were fired.

    Now let’s apply this idea to the original gravity scenario:

    Here we see gravity represented as lines radiating from the


    bodies.  The gravity radiates
    equally in all directions but
    only one pair of lines end up hitting the targets.  Those
    lines are
    shown in red.

    A short while later the gravity hits the opposing bodies.


    Both bodies have moved from their original locations.  But
    just like the arrows, the red field
    lines point directly back at the
    originating bodies’ new locations.

    Unlike arrows, gravity exerts an attractive force.  So the net


    result is a force pointing back at
    the originating body, and this
    happens despite there being a delay in the transmission.  The
    inward force direction is now directly opposite to the centrifugal
    force and the bodies will not
    spiral apart after all.

    We can apply the same principle to bodies of non-equal mass, such as


    the Earth-Moon
    system.  In this case the bodies will move at
    different speeds with the heavier body moving
    more slowly and closer to
    the barycentre.  The below diagram shows the equivalent
    situations
    with archers:

    Here the ‘heavy’ archer stands closer to the centre of the turntable
    which represents the
    barycentre of their ‘orbit’.  But even
    though their speeds are different (relative to the
    barycentre), each
    will use the same angle of aim to hit their target.

    Applying this logic to a gravitational situation gives the same


    result.  Namely that the
    gravitational force will point back
    to the originating body, as though gravity had crossed the
    space
    between them at infinite speed, even if it hadn’t.

    Bradley Aberration

    Another reason put forth for why gravity might apply a force in the
    direction of a body’s
    motion is Bradley aberration.  In 1727
    astronomer James Bradley observed that the location
    of stars appeared
    to shift in the direction that Earth moved around the Sun. 
    This diagram
    shows the idea:
    It was also noted that the angle the stars were at corresponds to v/c
    where v is the speed of
    Earth around the Sun.  

    If light changes its incoming direction to match tangential velocity,


    perhaps gravity does
    likewise?  And perhaps as we orbit the
    Sun we should also experience gravity at an angle of
    v/c?

    Not necessarily.  In  order to answer this we need to


    look at what is causing the aberration. 
    A likely cause of
    Bradley aberration is that light is hitting the molecules in the
    atmosphere
    more on one side than on the other.  This diagram
    shows the idea:

    The left image shows a molecule as motionless, relative to an above


    light source.  The light
    hits the top surface of the molecule
    equally and gets transmitted directly downward.  In the
    right
    image the molecule is moving to the right.  The light hits the
    right side of the molecule
    more than the left.  As a result
    the light is then transmitted at an angle.

    Applying this to the atmosphere as a whole, this is most likely what is


    occurring:

    Light strikes the atmosphere directly from above but then gets
    transmitted through the
    atmosphere at an angle.  This makes
    the stars appear to be in a different location.  Actually
    this
    would occur even if there were no atmosphere because the light
    would strike a telescope
    lens or eyeball with a tangential velocity and
    be transmitted through it at an angle.

    So Bradley aberration is likely an optical phenomenon similar to


    refraction.  We know that
    light has a number of behaviours
    when interacting with material.  It can bounce off mirrors,
    bend through mediums, and diffract through openings.  But we
    never observe gravity doing
    these things.  So there is no
    reason to believe Bradley aberration should necessarily apply to
    gravity.

    Further observations on the nature of gravity

    What the above tells us is that a slow gravitational speed doesn’t


    necessarily mean that an
    orbit will be unstable.  Gravity
    might move at an infinite speed but that is highly implausible
    since
    that would mean its effects would be instantaneous over unlimited
    distances.  It is also
    unlikely that it moves at the 2x1010
    times faster than light suggested by Van Flandern.

    If the above reasoning is correct and gravity does move at a finite


    speed and without pointing
    at a ‘ghost image’ of an attracting body,
    this tells us something about the nature of gravity:

    1. That it is radiated at a fixed speed relative to its


    source rather than to an observer or
    hypothetical background aether.
    That is, if gravity moves at speed g (relative to its
    source) and the
    source were moving at speed v (relative to an observer), the speed of
    the gravitational field relative to the observer will be g+v.
    2. That the orientation of the field – i.e. the angle it was
    emitted at – is important and is
    preserved within the field.
    3. That the direction of force will be along the direction
    that the field was emitted at rather
    than the direction it impacts a
    target body.

    This diagram shows how gravity acts along the orientation it was
    emitted at rather than the
    direction the field is moving at:

    Here we see a target body standing motionless and a source moving to the right.
     In the first
    frame the source emits a ‘gravity ray’.  The ray moves
    directly away from the source whilst
    also pointing directly away.  In the
    second frame the ray is halfway to the target and is
    moving at a diagonal
    relative to the target.  In the third frame the ray arrives at the target.
     Despite it hitting the target at an angle, it applies a force directly
    downward.

    Conclusions

    The stability of the Solar System cannot be used as proof for gravity
    being infinite in speed or
    moving at a large multiple of light-speed.

    Bradley aberration is probably an optical effect having to do with


    light hitting transparent
    mediums at an angle and is not applicable to
    gravity.

    [1] 
    http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html

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    Copyright © 2016
    Bernard Burchell, all rights reserved.

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