Results 1 to 11 of 11
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2018-03-03, 03:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Light waves do, I think sound waves don't, I'm sort of imagining that gravity waves don't, but does anybody know of a proof?
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2018-03-03, 05:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2016
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Gravitons and Photons are vaguely analogous, which would suggest they could be polarised (but then you have Phonons so)
Light waves polarisation is because the thing that varies (Electric and Magnetic field strength) is a Vector quantity, and the Vector quantity is at 90 degrees to the movement of the wave.
Accoustic waves the movement in in the direction of the wave, and if considered a pressure wave then is a scalar quantity.
Gravitational waves would involve a changing gravitational field strength (which is a vector), but which direction does it apply?
Spoiler: further musing well beyond my depth
Well in the one frame of reference (that of the wave), we can discount the magnetism, and say you just see the Electric Field that would of existed at the time the wave was there if you considered it electrostatically.
This is presumbably true for gravitational waves.
For an electric dipole, the field strength is [practically] zero when you are aligned with the dipole (you always see the charges acting in the same direction). I think you could effectively say the converse, that the amplitude of a wave in a given direction is thus related to the component of the electric field perpendicular to the waves.
That presumably also applies for gravitational fields.
______________________
Ahh, found something
It's only Wikipedia but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravit..._and_behaviour
"Gravitational waves are polarized because of the nature of their source." and a picture from Nasa including Polarised background wavesLast edited by jayem; 2018-03-03 at 05:16 PM.
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2018-03-03, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Gravity waves or gravitational waves?
According to Wikipedia, gravitational waves have a polarity, but only over a range from 0 to 90° (unlike light, which can be polarized in a range of directions from 0 to 180°).
However, gravity waves such as ocean waves do not, I believe, have a polarity. It's not like ocean waves can vibrate in any direction except up and down, right?
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2018-03-03, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Gravitons are tensor waves, so they should actually have a more complicated set of polarizations than light.
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2018-03-04, 03:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
- Location
- UK
- Gender
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
As I remember it, something to remember is that gravity does not usually go around in particles.
When you get light you get a stream of photons - OK they are both a wave and a particle, but they behave as particles which is why they are both.
With Gravity (and magnetism) what you get is a field (I have no idea how this works) but the particles are not there. To actually get a gravity particle (is that the Higgs boson?) takes a huge amount of energy and luck.
It's a bit simpler with electromagnetism - you can have an electric or a magnetic field and you can also have a flow of electricity (electrons), but they are not actually the same thing, or rather they are different manifestations of the same thing...
No, I don't understand this one at all.
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2018-03-04, 03:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
I think that points to difficulties in quantizing gravity, but I'm not sure that there's observational support to say definitively that gravitational waves aren't quantized. It just ends up introducing divergences you can't get rid of when you try to do it with the same approach you'd use for quantizing the electromagnetic field.
Outside of that issue, at least for any quantizable cases, 'field', 'wave', and 'particle' are all essentially different mathematical descriptions of the same thing. So the only thing I'm a bit iffy on is the particular shape of the way that quantizing gravity fails and how that relates to the feasibility of gravitons as 'proper' quantized particles. Gravitons would not be the same thing as the Higgs boson though, and they'd be extremely low-mass if not zero, due to how long-ranged gravitational effects are.Last edited by NichG; 2018-03-04 at 03:36 AM.
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2018-03-04, 11:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Sharangar's Revenge
- Gender
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
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2018-03-04, 12:53 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
- Location
- UK
- Gender
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2018-03-04, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2011
- Location
- Calgary, AB
- Gender
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2018-03-05, 03:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
- Location
- UK
- Gender
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2018-03-05, 08:45 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Sharangar's Revenge
- Gender
Re: Do gravity waves have a polarity?
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season