I’ve just got notice that my gravity paper, titled The force of gravity in Schwarzschild and Gullstrand-Painleve coordinates has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Modern Physics D, with only a very minor modification.
I’m kind of surprised by this, given that the paper proposes a new theory of gravity. I was expecting to have that portion excised.
And to help make a week more perfect, my paper for Foundations of Physics, titled Spin Path Integrals and Generations, got a good review along with a nasty one (and much good advice from both), and the editor has asked for me to revise the manuscript and resubmit. So I suppose this paper will also eventually be published. I’m a little over half finished with the rewrite. This paper is, if anything, even more radical than the gravity paper.
Finally, the Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational Physics conference organizers have chosen my abstract (based on the Foundations of Physics paper) for a 15 minute talk. The title is Position, Momentum, and the Standard Model Fermions. Marni Sheppeard (my coauthor for a third paper, “The discrete Fourier transform and the particle mixing matrices” which so far is having some difficulty getting published), is giving a related talk, Ternary logic in lepton mass quantum numbers immediately following mine.
So all in all, I am a very lucky amateur physicist
Mass 
Congratulations!!!
Great news! Now you’ve finally demolished all the reasons people keep telling me not to take people like you seriously. Gee, I wonder what they’ll dream up next?
Good for you. A whole new theory of gravity and published. That is indeed brainy.
Hi Carl,
Congratulations with the publication.
Can I ask whether the GTG of Anthony Lasenby and others assumes that gravitons are being exchanged only between masses A and B (i.e., requiring spin-2 gravitons for an attractive force as Fierz and Pauli did), or whether they include the other masses immense in the surrounding universe which can’t be stopped from exchanging gravitons with the masses A and B?
I’m wondering what graviton spin you are assuming?
“In particular, in GP coordinates, a particle falling
through the event horizon exceeds the speed of light … Gravitons capable of producing such a force must also exceed the speed of light. Such a theory would have gravity waves also travel faster than light.”
That may be hard to verify experimentally, so the question is whether the theory is sufficiently fact-based to guarantee the result regardless of tests. Is the Gullstrand-Painleve coordinate system definitely correct, or is there some questionable assumption in the metric, e.g. flat spacetime?
It seems that the universe is flat, since the expansion isn’t slowing down:
“… the flat universe is just not decelerating, it isn’t really accelerating … there’s a bit of the “phlogiston fallacy” here, one thinks if one can name Dark Energy or the Inflaton one knows something about it. And yes, inflation predicts flatness, and I even conditionally accept inflation, but how does the crucial piece Dark Energy follow from inflation?–don’t kid me, you have no idea.”
– Nobel laureate Phil Anderson, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/01/03/danger-phil-anderson/#comment-9371
This evidence based argument seems to justify assuming flatness, as you have done.
“… the graviton density increases
at a rate proportional to the square of the density of gravitons. In a perturbation
theory of gravitons, this term would arise by allowing two gravitons to interact to
create three (or more) all moving in the same direction. That is, in addition to
their emission from massive bodies, gravitons are emitted by stimulated emission
somewhat similar to the effect in lasers.”
So equations 14 and 15 come from taking the limit of small r in equation 13, where the non-Newtonian -2/r^3 term predominates over the 1/r^2 term at small distance r.
Going back to equation 11 for static (no radial motion) situations:
acceleration, a = (-1/r^2) + (2/r^3),
presumably this translates into the correct dimensions as:
a = (-MG/r^2) + (2GM/r^3)
which is a neat relativistic correction to Newtonian gravity for static situations.
I’m just wondering physically why this formula shows that at short distances (shorter than the normal black hole event horizon radius, 2GM/c^2) the acceleration due to gravity becomes zero and then reverses direction, becoming a repulsion at short distances? Is there any physical explanation for this behaviour?
Thanks,
Nige
Sorry, I made an error: acceleration, a = (-1/r^2) + (2/r^3),
can’t translate as
a = (-MG/r^2) + (2GM/r^3)
because 2GM/r^3, has units s^-2 not ms^-2.
Fine! Congratulations!
I just bought a bottle of 12-year Glenlivet to replace the bottle that I finished off.
Now I bought the previous bottle in 1999, does that make that last few tablespoons 22-year Glenlivet?
Woot! Congratulations!
I got a call today from a high school girl who needs tutoring in Physics. I said, “I can’t take your money. It’s not fair.” I can’t guarantee her I’d be as much of a help as I should be… to get paid. First thought though when I heard she called? “Dang. I wish Carl was here… this is second nature to him.”
Congrats! I follow your blog once in a while and I really like your enthusiasm for physics. Well done…
Hi Carl,
Congratulations on this paper.
That the speed of gravity might exceed the the speed of light is a fascinating idea.
I think it may be possible that spacetime is simultaneously curved and flat.
For example, a 3-ball such as the planet Earth is globally curved as well as locally flat.
The complementary spacetime may be locally curved as well as globally flat.
Are you aware that JC Maxwell initially described the mechanics of electromagnetism as a “corkscrew motion”?
Hi, Carl, an off-topic question from a stranger (me)…
I enjoy reading your weblog, but it is almost a mystical enjoyment, since at least 1/2 of it is over my head. If you might, please recommend some places to begin understanding these concepts in a straightforward way – maybe a web forum, an educational website, library books, etc.
Kind regards.
dwnielsen; the book you want is Feynman’s “QED, the Strange theory of Light and Matter”, available from Amazon, available used right now at prices as low as $2.25.
And why doesn’t wordpress allow preview on comments yet?
Thanks, Carl, that’s one of those that’s been one down on my list – almost got it when Ken Perlin mentioned it (http://blog.kenperlin.com/?p=1533). I’ll definitely pick it up now.
Congratulations sir, your math and papers are over my head. I just come here for the knots, them I can grasp. But I do know enough to know that being published anywhere in the scientific field is a great accomplishment. To do so while proposing a novel theory that goes against standard thought is a true marvel.
William C. Elliott
It is at least imaginable that a flux of gravitons could mimmic the effects of the EXTERIOR Schwarzschild geometry. For example, the slowing of clocks could be explained as being due to the anisotropy of the flow.
How does the graviton flux idea relate to the INTERIOR solution? The standard prediction is that the rate of a clock at the center is a local minimum. If gravitons are responsible, then how do they do it if their flow and distribution is now isotropic (due to symmetry)? Should we instead expect the clock’s rate to be a local maximum?