Recognition of a faster-than-light-speed propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the next plateau. 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. Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where 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. Such a change of perspective requires no change in the assumed character of gravitational radiation or its light-speed propagation. 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 Space-Time with the propagation speed indicated by observational evidence and experiments: not less than 2x10 10c. Problems with theĬausality 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. Gravitational radiation, which surely does propagate at light-speed 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. 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. 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. 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. When we apply these techniques to gravity, they all yield propagation speeds too great to measure, substantially faster than light-speed. Standard experimental techniques exist to determine the propagation speed of forces. ![]() However, the entire cosmos may be a trillion trillion times as big as the ‘observable’ Universe.THE SPEED OF GRAVITY - WHAT THE EXPERIMENTS SAY Unfortunately, we can never observe those parts of the Universe, so we can’t be sure how fast they are receding. In principle, the furthest we can see in the Universe is called the ‘cosmological horizon’, beyond which light cannot yet have reached us during the lifetime of the Universe.Īlthough we can never see it, the Universe still exists beyond this limit, and those invisible parts of the Universe are receding from us at greater than the speed of light. This is how we can say that the early Universe expanded faster than light. But the expansion of the Universe is not filling up ‘empty space’: rather, it is ‘space’ itself that is expanding.Īlthough the laws of physics say that two objects can’t move faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, there’s no such restriction on the expansion of the actual space through which they move.
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