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Faster than light?


thomma

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I have read a couple of previous posts about this, but have wondered if the supposed graviton, if responsible for gravity, could be actually faster than light.

 

My reasoning for this is that if light can't escape a black hole but gravity can, does that not make gravity faster than light?

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I have read a couple of previous posts about this, but have wondered if the supposed graviton, if responsible for gravity, could be actually faster than light.

 

My reasoning for this is that if light can't escape a black hole but gravity can, does that not make gravity faster than light?

 

 

It was a measurement error. The neutrinos were not traveling faster than light.

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It was a measurement error. The neutrinos were not traveling faster than light.

Are neutrinos the same as gravitons? I'm don't think they are.

 

My question really is if gravity from a black hole is that strong light can't escape does that not make whatever particles, if any, that make up gravity, travel faster than light as their effect is felt beyond the event horison?

 

 

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It was a measurement error. The neutrinos were not traveling faster than light.

Source please. You are clearly more up to date than I, as of Fridy the state of play was that the research group would repeat the experiment with changes sugested to them, including much shorter proton bursts. In addition a Japanese team would also carry out tests. Why would these things proceed if it was already established that the source of the anomaly was measurement?

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Are neutrinos the same as gravitons? I'm don't think they are.

 

My question really is if gravity from a black hole is that strong light can't escape does that not make whatever particles, if any, that make up gravity, travel faster than light as their effect is felt beyond the event horison?

 

 

 

Oh, I'm terribly sorry. There has been a lot of posts about the FTL neutrinos and I reflexively thought you were making a connection with that.

 

Gravitons do not have to travel faster than c to be felt beyond the event horizon. They are the hypothetical particle responsible for the transmission of gravity. Therefore, they are necessarily immune to the effects of gravity.

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There's a pretty good answer to your question here, from NASA's "Ask an astrophysicist":

 

http://imagine.gsfc....rs/980601a.html

 

A similar answer comes from Cornell:

 

http://curious.astro....php?number=264

 

 

Unfortunately I can't buy those explanations -- that virtual particles are "immune" to the event horizon.

 

The question is one that requires simultaneous consideration of strong gravitational fields -- highly curved spacetime -- and the behavior of elementary particles, in particular virtual particles -- quantum field theory.

 

We do not have a fully unified theory of quantum gravity that would, if it were to exist, cover questions of both gravitation and the quantm behavior of particles.

 

The closest thing that exists is quantum field theory in curved spacetime (in which I am most definitely not expert), and that theory is rather problematic itself. But to address questions such as the one posed, it is all that is available. Unfortunately in this theory one no longer has the notion of "particles", and hence I find the answers given in the links to be pure handwaving, and invalid handwaving at that.

 

There are times when honest science requires an answer of "I don't know".

 

Ref: Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime and Black Hole Thermodynamics by Robert M. Wald

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have read a couple of previous posts about this, but have wondered if the supposed graviton, if responsible for gravity, could be actually faster than light.

 

My reasoning for this is that if light can't escape a black hole but gravity can, does that not make gravity faster than light?

that actually is reasonable because if Gravitons are particles [i don't exactly know if photons would be a particle or not{i thought that a particle has mass}] (ok lets say light is a particle) is light cant escape but gravity can then, like you said it would make it faster than light.
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