The speed of Gravity

[KAS]

It has always been said that Gravity is the least studied force in nature.
Some say it has a speed many times that of light whilst others disagree.
It appears to me that there is a fundamental shortfall in knowledge on this subject. Certainly not enough to come to a conclusion.

Then it suddenly dawned on me. To accurately measure the speed of gravity, all you need is a gravity powered (rotating) machine.
Then, by eliminating all negative influences like friction and air resistance, it would be possible to establish a mathematical formula to accurately measure the true speed.

So IMO, who ever discovers a way to rotate a wheel using gravity will not only be an historic hero as far as free energy is concerned, but will also be the one who discovers the actual speed of gravity.

By eliminating negative influences, I mean magnetic (frictionless) bearings and containing the device in a vacuum chamber.

Would I be right in this assumption?

Kas

[jim_mich]

I think your assumption is flawed. There is no way to use an electric motor to measure the speed of electricity. You need to have some way of determining when the force (gravity or electric) passes a first location and when it passes a second location and a way to determine the time difference between the two events. This is easy with electric because it can be conducted through wires. Gravity is a much different situation.

One way to measure the speed of gravity may be to do it during an eclipse of the moon. Gravity changes during an eclipse as witnessed by the swing speed of pendulums. It might be possible to use this change of swing speed in some way to calculate how fast and when the force of gravity changes relative to the position of the Earth, moon and sun.

Of course if you want to repeat the experiment you need to wait until the next lunar eclipse and you need to position the test equipment in the path of the eclipse shadow.

[KAS]

I would normally agree Jim. But your analogy in comparing gravity to electricity may be the wrong model.

Both act in very different ways. We know allot about the conductivity of electricity and how, and what speed it moves through different elements.

Gravity however, is a very different animal. As I understand it, the density of mass as no effect on the speed of gravitons as it passes though it, and that it is only measurable if the mass moves with it. Therein exposes another problem. If we were to measure the effect of a mass as it moves from one point in a gravity field to another. We only have a short term representation of the speed of gravity.
We cannot calculate the acceleration rate due to the short distance in which it can travel in a terrestrial experiment.

Now, if you consider a frictionless continuous data a gravity powered wheel could supply. Now that would be something special.
An experiment not reliant on a point to point distance or time. Then I think we could talk about real useful effective data.

Kas

[rmd3]

KAS,

If the gravity wheel is just the difference in torque between two sides of the wheel, then the factor of gravity would simply be cancelled out of the equation to arrive at the resulting torque. I don't see how it would help determine the speed of gravity, but many people don't think a gravity wheel is possible either, so I'm not one to burst your bubble.

Can you give a scenario where the speed of gravity is present in an equation which we can apply to a wheel? Come to think of it, are there any physics equations that have the speed of gravity in them?

-Randall

[evgwheel]

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/R ... speed.html
This link and many more on the net may be helpful. Have fun

[KAS]

Randal,

The way I see it is - the problem with experimenting with gravity in our terrestrial environment is that it cannot provide us with an accurate representation of the acting forces.
True, we can measure how long it takes for a mass to fall from one point in a gravity field to another. We can even do this in a vacuum. But we cannot separate acceleration from the natural terminal speed of gravity.

A mass will accelerate with gravity until it reaches its terminal velocity - The speed of gravity. We can easily measure the rate of acceleration
by creating an acceleration curve. We just need more acceleration time to finite the data.
If we had a vacuum tube 1000ft tall maybe we could start to get some useful info.
Alternatively, and IMO, an out of balance wheel would be the perfect vehicle for measuring this.

If it were possible, if we subtract the negative forces from an OOB wheel including counter torque, CF and friction (if any). All we would be left with is a continuous effect of free fall. Thats assuming that there will be a positive answer left at the end of it. I think it would be a complex equation though.

Of course, such a wheel would burn up and vaporise long before it was able to establish the true speed of gravity no matter what it was made of. But it could provide us with extended data feedback on acceleration.
Then, couple this data with what we already know about the gravitational forces observed from the movement of astral bodies and we may have a better understanding of the true speed.

All this is academic of course because we don't have an OOB wheel yet.

Kas

[AB Hammer]

Dang-et! Kas, I am working on the wheel!!

Until then, your best bet is to measure the speed of shooting stars.

[mickegg]

Hmmm......if light cannot escape the huge gravitational forces inside a black hole does that mean
that the "speed" of gravity must be equal to or greater than the speed of light?

Regards

Mick

[rlortie]

Edit:

I have been informed by private mail that my opinion regarding gravity is in error! Therefore I pull my previous statement.

Ralph

[Gregory]

As far as I know, scientists think that the propagational speed of gravity equals the speed of light. It is experimentally difficult to measure this rate of propagation, because we would have to deal with celestial bodies.

One way to do it:
First ask god to take you to another solar system, where you can perform the experiment.
Second you have to measure and monitor the velocity & path of all the planets (or at least one) revolving around the star, and of course measure the time very precisely. After this you can start your clock and ask god to make the central star disappear at 0:01 minute. Then you just have to wait and measure how much time it takes for the planets to react to the absence of gravitational pull of the disappeared star. From this time value the propagational speed of gravity can be calculated.

After the planets "sense", that the star disappeared from the center, they instantly begin to fly tangentially outwards, and leave their normal paths. With other words the solar system collapses, and this is why you have to travel to another solar system for this experiment. ;))

In the past, before Einstein, Scientists assumed that the rate of propagation of gravity is infinitely fast. After Einstein's and others work they changed it to the speed of light. I know a piece of information which may support this: The fastest galaxies are traveling at a speed very close to the speed of light.
In the other hand it can be irrelevant as well, because according to Einstein's theories nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and material bodies cannot ever reach this speed. This is because their mass (inertial mass) close to the speed of light becomes so big, that it would require infinite amount of energy to accelerate it even faster, so that's impossible. However this may have nothing to do with the propagational rate of gravity, which supposedly can and may be even faster, because nobody knows for sure what gravity is and how it propagates through "empty space".

So, after this information, it can be concluded that a body falling in vacuum cannot ever answer the thing. We can never have a vacuum tube big enough, but if we indeed can, that may be still useless to conclude anything. (for the reasons I mentioned above)

The speed of any kind of material object and the rate of propagation of gravity are two different things.

As for the experiment with the help of the great old one... A more practical & easier experiment would be good. It would be a hard thing to play god, or to call him and ask to help please with this star here! 8-]]

[LustInBlack]

I would simply ask God to tell me the speed of gravity.. Less trouble for him...

8]

[Gregory]

LOL!! You're right!

:)