On the "Meaning of the "Speed of Gravity""

If the graviton exists, it is the most abundant and the least detected entity (undetected) in this whole Universe. It strikes me as a very similar argument with that of God; It is everywhere but no one has ever been able to see Him. In the history of humanity, when people could not explain a natural phenomenon they invoked acts of God. In a similar way, most that speak about the graviton claim that it is too small to be detected, therefore it could exist without us been able to measure it...

Just a simple thought, apart from GR or LR or any fancy mathematical manilupation of symbols in a desperate hope it uncovers reality; Is the graviton just like the unicorn? A hunt that will take us nowhere.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Just a simple thought, apart from GR or LR or any fancy mathematical manilupation of symbols in a desperate hope it uncovers reality; Is the graviton just like the unicorn? A hunt that will take us nowhere.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I would say that the hunt for the graviton is taking us nowhere because Tom V and only a handful of others actually believe there is one to begin with. You can't find something unless you perform experiments to find it, and that takes money. And when the money is only doled out to Einstein believers it is difficult to make any progress at all. But even then, have we found the electron or the photon beyond a long chain of inferences?

The thing I found interesting about the debate with Kopeikin was that he only seemed to be concerned with mathematical correctness and not with what the mathematics actually means physically. Twice he said to show where his math was wrong and never seemed to grasp that it was not the math but the interpretation of the math that was the issue. I guess this is symptomatic of the modern attitude of developing an equation and then claiming that one has made a "discovery" about the universe. We need fewer theoreticians and more scientists that will actually conduct physical experiments. We also need a percentage of funding to be directed to non-majority opinion experiments.

The term "graviton" appears in all modern attempts at quantum theory of gravity. Some theories consider three variations - graviscalar, graviphoton and graviton, spin 0, 1 and 2 respectively. In any interpretation, the spin-2 gravitons are the quanta of einsteinian-type gravity. Anyway, the term is quite respectable.

I entered the unicorn into this stuff not about gravity of attempts to quantify gravity. The unicorn is about objects like blackholes and many other fantasy objects many people currently believe are real.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[makis]: If the graviton exists, it is the most abundant and the least detected entity (undetected) in this whole Universe. It strikes me as a very similar argument with that of God; It is everywhere but no one has ever been able to see Him. In the history of humanity, when people could not explain a natural phenomenon they invoked acts of God. In a similar way, most that speak about the graviton claim that it is too small to be detected, therefore it could exist without us been able to measure it...<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

This whole line of reasoning depends on unverified assumptions as its premises. In this case, it assumes that scale is finite and that all we can see is all there is to see.

In the Meta Model, scale is infinite (as deduced from first principles and reasoning from Zeno's paradoxes, not assumed). If that is so, then there must always exist entities just below our ability to detect on the small scale, and just beyond our observational reach on the large scale. It is perfectly rational for us to always be looking for ways to extend our horizons.

Gravity is a force, which means it changes the momentum of target bodies. To avoid invoking magic, miracles, or the supernatural, we are compelled to posit real momentum carriers for this force. That is again logic, not assumption. We are presently doing our best to describe the nature (size, speed, number density, etc.) of these undiscovered entities so that future physicists will be able to discover them. With discovery comes prediction and the possibility of control, just as the history of physics shows.

IMO, people are doing just fine in their efforts to explain gravity, and doing so without miracles. If you propose to throw out the only known logical solution that requires no miracles, wouldn't that be more an act of faith than the converse? -|Tom|-

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Gravity is a force, which means it changes the momentum of target bodies.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Force changes the momentum of target bodies, and in turn, the change in momentum of target bodies defines the force (Newton's 2nd law: F = DP/Dt)

There is an apparent circularity here. I believe the whole institution is based on tautological, circular arguments based on hypothetical (unicorn) entities.

Therefore, I totally agree with the approach of searching for the fundmantal cause, which may or may not be the graviton. My view is that a synthtic approach followed by most, i.e. constructing a theory that supposedly fits reality and then trying to satisfy it experimentally is a "primitive" way of doing things and characteristic of "primitive" thinking societies. We ought to go one step beyond and try to understand causes. If a foundation for doing that is established, the models describing reality will become "self evident".

In other words, I assert that human thinking is "locked" in a certain thinking mode that makes it hard to "see" what's really out there. That includes myself of course as I am the victim of the system too.