Top Document: [sci.astro] Astrophysics (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (4/9) Previous Document: D.04 Does gravity travel at the speed of light? Next Document: D.06 Can gravitational waves be detected? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge General Relativity has a set of equations that give results for how a lump of mass-energy changes the space-time around it. (See D.03.) One of the solutions to these equations is the infamous black hole, another solution is the results used in modern cosmology, and the third common solution is one that leads to gravitational waves. Over a hundred years ago Maxwell realized that a solution to the equations governing electricity and magnetism would create waves. These waves move at the same speed that light does, and, hence, he realized that light is an electro-magnetic wave. In general, electromagnetic waves are created whenever a charge is accelerated, that is, whenever its velocity changes. Gravitational waves are analogous. However, instead of being disturbances in electric and magnetic fields, they are disturbances in spacetime. As such, they affect things like the distance between two points or the amount of time perceived to pass by an observer. Moreover, since there is no "negative mass," and momentum is conserved, any acceleration of mass is balanced by an equal and opposite change of momentum of some other mass. This implies that the lowest order gravitational wave is quadrupole, and gravitational waves are produced when an acceleration changes. Because gravitational waves are waves, they should exhibit many other properties of waves. For example, gravitational waves can, in principle, be scattered or exhibit a redshift. (But see the next question on the difficulty of testing this prediction.) [Note, *gravitational* waves...gravity waves are something else entirely (they occur in a medium when gravity is the restoring force) and are commonly seen in the atmosphere and oceans.] User Contributions:Top Document: [sci.astro] Astrophysics (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (4/9) Previous Document: D.04 Does gravity travel at the speed of light? Next Document: D.06 Can gravitational waves be detected? Part0 - Part1 - Part2 - Part3 - Part4 - Part5 - Part6 - Part7 - Part8 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: jlazio@patriot.net
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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