Dark Matter

[Ziggurat]

The probes that has been sent out deep into space have proved the laws of gravity and mass to be incorrect in weaker gravitational fields.

Where'd you get that information? Sounds to me like your sources are confused, I haven't heard anything to that effect. In fact, the only place I've heard that people are looking for deviations from current gravitational theories are actually at the SMALL length scales. There's some speculation that 1/r^2 might not be accurate when r < 1 mm, but that would require greater sensitivity than we can measure right now.

Edit: OK, I see what you were refering to. Right now, though, I'd say it's still too soon to say that modifications to gravity are what account for the unexpected acceleration. But for more details on the reported observation, see:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0104064

To really nail this down though, you'd want to do a mission specifically for this purpose, as those same people propose, to really try to eliminate as many possible sources of systematic error as possible:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0205059

 

[Diamond]

Re: Vaccum energy

What exactly is vaccum energy?

Well, my vacuum energy is around 1000W. It'll suck up anything.

I crack me up.

 

[Ian]

Gravitational Fields?

General Relativity doesn't agree with the idea of gravitational fields. It says that every massive object in space bends space-time creating a dent sort of like how a bowling ball would make a dent on a trampoline. I think that the sun makes a "huge" dent in spacetime and that dent causes the planets to continously fall inwards but never reaches it because the sun is so massive and the planets are not so massive compared to the sun. Even an astronomical expirement confirmed the bending of spacetime by a massive object "the sun" right after Einstein said that during an eclipse of the sun you can detect a distortion of starlight as the starlight passes through our sun's indentation in spacetime. This was confirmed during an expedition to Africa I think in the early part of the 20'th century. I don't think that gravitational fields are real because by now we would have detected the particle that causes their to be a gravitational field.

 

[Ziggurat]

Re: Gravitational Fields?

General Relativity doesn't agree with the idea of gravitational fields.

Well, that's partly just a semantic issue of what you mean by field. You can pick certain requirements for fields that stuff like electric and magnetic fields satisfy but won't work for gravity under GR, but that doesn't mean you can't work with a broader definition. So I'd say whether or not it's a "field" isn't really the important question. A more direct issue along those lines is whether or not gravitational waves are quantized, and yes, GR doesn't seem to like that idea so much.

Even an astronomical expirement confirmed the bending of spacetime by a massive object "the sun" right after Einstein said that during an eclipse of the sun you can detect a distortion of starlight as the starlight passes through our sun's indentation in spacetime.

You can get bending of starlight even in a classical or special relativity context. The more famous early success of GR was to correctly calculate the precession of Mercury's orbit. Mercury is in an eliptical orbit, but the long axis of that elipse is also slowly moving around the sun. Part of that is due to other planets, but much of it is actually a general relativity effect. There have been other experimental confirmations as well.

I don't think that gravitational fields are real because by now we would have detected the particle that causes their to be a gravitational field.

No, actually we probably wouldn't have. Gravity is amazingly weak compared to all the other fundamental forces. If gravity waves are quantized (which is what you're talking about by a gravity "particle"), individual gravitational quanta are probably going to be amazingly weak. We probably have no hope of ever having enough sensitivity to detect the quantization of gravitational waves directly. As it is we haven't even detected gravitational waves at all yet, though there are experiments currently under way to try to do that.