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To: spunkets

Any force mediated by a massless vector boson will propogate at the speed of light.

It's not so clear that gravity is such a force: do we believe string theory's attempts to construct a theory with a graviton, despite string theory predicting a contra-factual massless scalar field, and still not being well-forumlated (is the background 10 dimensional? 11 dimensional?. . .), or do we take the fairly well-validated approach of general relativity in which gravity is the curvature of space-time, and not a field that propogates at all?


12 posted on 05/17/2006 10:59:22 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: The_Reader_David
"do we take the fairly well-validated approach of general relativity in which gravity is the curvature of space-time, and not a field that propogates at all?"

GR predicts the propagation of gravitational waves from mass/energy quadupoles (2 or more objects).

"string theory's attempts to construct a theory with a graviton, despite string theory predicting a contra-factual massless scalar field,"

The graviton naturally emerges as a spin 2 massless particle in any string theory. It is the closed string. The Hamiltonian for this closed string includes the momentum of the string which is a vector, so I don't see how it can be called a "scaler field".

"(is the background 10 dimensional? 11 dimensional?"

More like 26, since it takes that many to include chiral fermions. These theories though have duals. The 10/11 dimentional theories are equivalent to 3D 2t(time) theories and it depends whether deSitter, or anti-deSitter space is considered. The closed string in anti-deSitter space can exist off the branes and explains why gravity is so weak. Open strings are required to have their endpoints on a brane. In general it's better to use the simplest picture to conceptualize the phenomina.

14 posted on 05/17/2006 12:42:45 PM PDT by spunkets
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