Speed of Gravity

Jim,

The heat generation is an unavoidable side effect of pushing gravity, and occurs for isolated masses as well as pairs of masses.

IOW, even if Earth were transported to a place where no other mass was close by, it would still experience the heating effect caused by a small portion of the graviton flux through it being absorbed.

LB

In fact the heating effect for Earth-in-isolation would be slightly larger than for Earth-in-orbit-of-Sol because there would be no graviton shadow cast on Earth from Sol.

LB

LB, So how would the effect play out in the Earth/moon system? All work ends up as heat in thermodynamics so if gravity causes work to be done upon the Earth what happens to the heat and how much work and heat is being done to keep the system in orbit? Is the process 100% efficient or are other factors in play here?

Jim,

If gravitational force is the only force at play then the process of orbiting is 100% efficient and no work is done on either of the orbiting masses.

But ... graviton absorbtion still causes a heating effect in both masses.

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Gravitational force appears to be a negative entropy phenomenon. For example if you start with a gas cloud and add gravity you end up with a solar system. The very random mixture of elements in the cloud becomes numerous highly differentiated collections of high purity elements in the new star and planets. Order out of disorder. Entropy in reverse.

LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nemesis</i>
You mean at least 20 billion times faster than light, don't you, Larry?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

No. And yes.

For measurements based on solar system phenomena this constraint is limited to 20 times the speed of light. The larger limit you cite comes from observing high mass binary systems elsewhere in the universe.

Obviously the larger limit trumps the lower, even within our solar system. But our ability to determine, even in our own back yard under low mass low velocity conditions, that gravitational force propagation must be FTL is important.

LB

Hello,

Many thanks for your comments.

I made a schematic draft to illustrate stellar aberration and behaviour of gravity:

((link deleted by modertor LB - it did not point to a picture))

Is this picture OK?

Antti Roine