Question about gravity

[Tumbleweed]

Is not electromagnetism caused by the excess or difficiency of electrons, and not two differently charged particles interacting. In other words there is no separate polarity, just excess and deficiency. Provide a path for those excess electrons to travel to the area of difficiency and you have a circuit with current. I view electricity as a bunch of excess electrons in the ground just waiting to pop out if a deficiency in electrons is produced somewhere - such as in a generator - and a path is provide for them to get there.
A sine wave may be misconstrued to as to having equal and opposite amplitudes on the y axis. If the x axis is simply moved so that the sine wave is entirely above it, it is merely a matter of ebb and flow. Two versus minus two on a graph implies opposites. Four versus zero does not, just a change in rate
If gravity is to be linked to electromagnetism, would it work the same way? An excess of gravitons attracts a relative deficiency of them with warped space as a side effect, or is the warped space completing the gravitational "circuit"

 

[Ziggurat]

Is not electromagnetism caused by the excess or difficiency of electrons, and not two differently charged particles interacting. In other words there is no separate polarity, just excess and deficiency.

No. It is true that there's no real distinction between having too many electrons and having too few protons, for example, but the fact that the protons are charged really does matter. Otherwise, why is having a collection of electrons with equal number of protons different, electrically, from having the same number of electrons with no protons at all? It's not possible to construct a theory of electromagnetism which ignores the positive charge of protons. And in certain batteries, for example, the current is carried by the motion of positive ions, NOT by the negative electrons.

If gravity is to be linked to electromagnetism, would it work the same way?

No.

An excess of gravitons attracts a relative deficiency of them

You've got the comparison wrong. Gravitons (if they exist) are to gravity as light is to electricity. Mass is to gravity what charge is to electricity. And mass only comes in one flavor, charge comes in two flavors. Charged particles don't emit light unless they wiggle, and massive bodies wouldn't emit gravitons unless they wiggle. But the electric field and the gravitational field are there even in the absence of any wiggling from the source.

 

[sol invictus]

Charged particles don't emit light unless they wiggle, and massive bodies wouldn't emit gravitons unless they wiggle. But the electric field and the gravitational field are there even in the absence of any wiggling from the source.

Well, one could quibble with that. I would say that charged (or massive) particles which are not accelerating absorb as many photons (gravitons) as they emit, rather than that they don't emit any.

In quantum field theory the forces between two charged particles are due to the photons they exchange (i.e. photons one emits and the other absorbs).

 

[MattusMaximus]

Very informative thread. Thank you all.

From the number of people who keep popping into the physics threads, I think I'd like to meet a number of you at TAM6. What say we have a "physics geeks" get-together at TAM6?

Whose with me?

Cheers - Mattus

 

[Ziggurat]

Well, one could quibble with that. I would say that charged (or massive) particles which are not accelerating absorb as many photons (gravitons) as they emit, rather than that they don't emit any.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

 

[Tumbleweed]

No. It is true that there's no real distinction between having too many electrons and having too few protons, for example, but the fact that the protons are charged really does matter. Otherwise, why is having a collection of electrons with equal number of protons different, electrically, from having the same number of electrons with no protons at all? It's not possible to construct a theory of electromagnetism which ignores the positive charge of protons. And in certain batteries, for example, the current is carried by the motion of positive ions, NOT by the negative electrons.





You've got the comparison wrong. Gravitons (if they exist) are to gravity as light is to electricity. Mass is to gravity what charge is to electricity. And mass only comes in one flavor, charge comes in two flavors. Charged particles don't emit light unless they wiggle, and massive bodies wouldn't emit gravitons unless they wiggle. But the electric field and the gravitational field are there even in the absence of any wiggling from the source.

Obviously I was too broad brushed with my definition of surplus vs deficiency as opposed to positive vs negative, and should have limited it to current flow instead

 

[Tumbleweed]

I thought they were going to test for gravitons using that collider or whatever it was they built in Texas by now. What happened?

 

[Ziggurat]

Obviously I was too broad brushed with my definition of surplus vs deficiency as opposed to positive vs negative, and should have limited it to current flow instead

There are a lot of cases where the sign of the charge carrier (which charge is moving) is irrelevant, and you only care about net current. But there are experiments you can perform (for example, the Hall Effect) which are sensitive not just to the net current, but to the actual sign of the charges which are flowing. So even limiting yourself to talking about current doesn't work, you still can't get around the existence of both positive and negative charges.

 

[Ziggurat]

I thought they were going to test for gravitons using that collider or whatever it was they built in Texas by now. What happened?

The Superconducting Super Collider would have been finished by now, except that it got cancelled over a decade ago and never got very close to completion. It wasn't intended to search for gravitons (and probably couldn't have found them anyways), but rather the Higgs boson, which the Standard Model predicts and which is intimately connected to that theory's description of mass, but it is distinct from gravitons.

 

[Tumbleweed]

There are a lot of cases where the sign of the charge carrier (which charge is moving) is irrelevant, and you only care about net current. But there are experiments you can perform (for example, the Hall Effect) which are sensitive not just to the net current, but to the actual sign of the charges which are flowing. So even limiting yourself to talking about current doesn't work, you still can't get around the existence of both positive and negative charges.[/quot

I thought current flow had to do with electrons only and have never heard of positive and negative electrons except in antimatter or string theory presentations
I thought it was just like lightning where an excess of electrons flows when a path is provided, and that positive an negative referred to the relative number of electrons located anywhere within a circuit

 

[ponderingturtle]

Well, one could quibble with that. I would say that charged (or massive) particles which are not accelerating absorb as many photons (gravitons) as they emit, rather than that they don't emit any.

In quantum field theory the forces between two charged particles are due to the photons they exchange (i.e. photons one emits and the other absorbs).

But aren't those virtual particles and you need acceleration to get real photons or gravitons?

 

[ponderingturtle]

From the number of people who keep popping into the physics threads, I think I'd like to meet a number of you at TAM6. What say we have a "physics geeks" get-together at TAM6?

Whose with me?

Cheers - Mattus

No me, as I need to finish my physics degree this year, and will likely need to take a semester as a leave of absense at work, no TAM for me.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I thought current flow had to do with electrons only and have never heard of positive and negative electrons except in antimatter or string theory presentations
I thought it was just like lightning where an excess of electrons flows when a path is provided, and that positive an negative referred to the relative number of electrons located anywhere within a circuit

That is generaly true, but you can get holes that act as postive charge carriers in semiconductors

Wikilink

Of course all kinds of exotic particles have electric charges as well

 

[sol invictus]

The Superconducting Super Collider would have been finished by now, except that it got cancelled over a decade ago and never got very close to completion.

On the upside, they now grow mushrooms commercially in the huge tunnel they dug for the beam path.

Yummm....

 

[sol invictus]

...at TAM6.

Are those interesting?

I spend quite a lot of my time traveling to conferences, so going to one for fun isn't terribly appealing, but you never know...

 

[Ziggurat]

I thought current flow had to do with electrons only

It's complicated. Individual electrons only ever have negative charge. But the elementary excitations (such as charges moving around) in solids are typically not the excitations of single electrons, so those excitations don't always behave like they're negative. But more concrete and easy to understand examples are available in various conducting solutions (such as in liquid batteries), where current can be transmitted by the motion of positive ions in the solution and not by electrons.

 

[robinson]

Electromagnetism, it is as easy to understand as gravity.

 

[sol invictus]

Electromagnetism, it is as easy to understand as gravity.

Easy for who? You?

Obviously it's easy for someone, considering the incredible array of electronic devices we have all around us. Not to mention calculations of the electromagnetic constant which agree with experiment to 12 significant figures.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Electromagnetism, it is as easy to understand as gravity.

No much easier, you don't need the same level of math as E&M does not use tensor calculus.

 

[Tumbleweed]

It's complicated. Individual electrons only ever have negative charge. But the elementary excitations (such as charges moving around) in solids are typically not the excitations of single electrons, so those excitations don't always behave like they're negative. But more concrete and easy to understand examples are available in various conducting solutions (such as in liquid batteries), where current can be transmitted by the motion of positive ions in the solution and not by electrons.

Could the electron in that makes the ion charged be considered as the current flow in the battery instead of the entire ion? Is the electron transferring from ion to ion or is the entire ion moving as current flow?