Abstract
Standard experimental techniques exist to determine the
propagation speed of forces. When we apply these techniques to
gravity, they all yield propagation speeds too great to measure,
substantially faster than lightspeed. This is because gravity,
in contrast to light, has no detectable aberration or propagation
delay for its action, even for cases (such as binary pulsars)
where sources of gravity accelerate significantly during the
light time from source to target By contrast, the finite propagation
speed of light causes radiation pressure forces to have a non-radial
component causing orbits to decay (the "Poynting-Robertson
effect"); but gravity has no counterpart force proportional
to v/c to first order. General relativity (GR) explains these
features by suggesting that gravitation (unlike electromagnetic
forces) is a pure geometric effect of curved space-time, not
a force of nature that propagates. Gravitational radiation, which
surely does propagate at lightspeed but is a fifth order effect
in v/c, is too small to play a role in explaining this difference
in behavior between gravity and ordinary forces of nature. Problems
with the causality principle also exist for GR in this connection,
such as explaining how the external fields between binary black
holes manage to continually update without benefit of communication
with the masses hidden behind event horizons. These causality
problems would be solved without any change to the mathematical
formalism of GR, but only to its interpretation, if gravity is
once again taken to be a propagating force of nature in flat
spacetime with the propagation speed indicated by observational
evidence and experiments: not less than 2 x 10
10 c. Such a change
of perspective requires no change in the assumed character of
gravitational radiation or its lightspeed propagation. Although
faster-than-light force propagation speeds do violate Einstein
special relativity (SR), they are in accord with Lorentzian relativity,
which has never been experimentally distinguished from SR-at
least, not if favor of SR. Indeed, far from upsetting much of
current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective
are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such
as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum
physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible
unification of forces. Recognition of a faster-than-lightspeed
propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental
evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the
next plateau.
Read the rest at
http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html. Discuss it here.
Keith Barrows
Founder
The Terran Institute