811
Heh (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Electromagnetism and gravity are both mediated by massless bosons; photons and gravitons respectively. This is why both forces follow the inverse square law.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I don't think there's any evidence for gravitons yet, and gravity hasn't been quantized. I'd say it's this similarity that's the best argument of quantum gravity, not the other way around.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Fair. The masslessness of the bosons that should mediate gravity, along with them being spin-2, can however be deduced from the properties of gravitational waves.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    We know that gravity is a wave that travels at the speed of light, this has been experimentally measured many times. If it is also quantized (a very reasonable symptom hypothesis since everything else that we've ever seen is) then by definition there are particles that carry gravity.

    If gravity is continuous then we would end up with something like the ultraviolet catastrophe but for gravity.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Hmm, I hadn't considered an "ultragravity catastrophe". I wonder if this could accout for dark energy or the supposed inflatons? Probably not, the catastrophe suggests infinite energy, not just lots of energy, eh?

    The ultraviolet catastrophe was averted due to the discreet nature of electrons though, and I don't recall gravity behaving as a blackbody radiator anyway. Would this come into effect at horizons?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Sorry, I think I came off as too confident in my previous comment. I'm quite sure about my first paragraph but the rest is just speculation from an amateur.

    If I would risk speculating even further though, there's some similarity in the sense that infinities indicate a problem. In the ultraviolet catastrophe the infinity arises from the energy of arbitrarily short EM wavelengths. With gravity it arises in the density of black holes. It seems unreasonable that it would actually be infinite, and it's possible that quantization of gravity plays a part in preventing that from happening.

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