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Should shifting the reference frame make any difference in measurements?
1 posted on 06/23/2003 9:25:12 AM PDT by RightWhale
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To: RightWhale
Why, does an object fall only about 145+- MPH to earth?
225 posted on 06/26/2003 5:47:22 PM PDT by sit-rep
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To: RightWhale
Albert Einstein may have been right that gravity travels at the same speed as light but, contrary to a claim made earlier this year, the theory has not yet been proven. A scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) says the announcement by two scientists, widely reported this past January, about the speed of gravity was wrong.

If the idea of gravity propagating at light speed is a requirement of relativity, then it's time relativity was dropped. Gravity is known by experiment to propagate either instantaneously or close enough thereto that our best instruments cannot tell the difference.

Tom Van Flandern's page on the topic at Metaresearch notes that:

By contrast, gravitational forces are large, readily detected, and control the dynamics of most of the visible universe. Gravimeters easily detect the gravitational force from, and motion of, a person entering a room, for example. The propagation speed of gravitational force is bounded by six experiments to be much faster than the speed of light.
[[5]]. For example:

Van Flandern stops just short of calling Kopeikin an outright fraud.

268 posted on 06/27/2003 9:58:47 AM PDT by martianagent
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To: RightWhale
Sorry I'm late to the party. Work does that to me...

Anyway, it seems there's some kind of brew-ha-ha about GR and the position of the Sun. A few points to keep in mind:

1. The Sun and the Earth are both moving, roughly in tandem, around the Galactic center, towards Andromeda, towards the Great Attractor, etc.

2. From the Earth's point of view, the Sun is always where it "really" was 8 minutes ago.

3. If gravity moves faster than the speed of light, we have a problem with causality. By definition spacetime moves at speed c. If gravity moved faster, then objects would affect each other without "seeing" each other. That makes no sense.

As for General Relativity, ever measurement from Mercury to stellar occultations to binary neutron stars to rocketed atomic clocks confirms GR exactly.

MD, whose PhD dissertation was about gravitational lensing
299 posted on 06/27/2003 8:37:59 PM PDT by MikeD (up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start)
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Note: topic is from 2003.

308 posted on 08/12/2008 9:57:16 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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