Comment on Do gravitational waves exhibit wave-particle duality?

• atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Right - that’s what I’m saying. But this article seems to think that if you make a bicycle out of cars then you have a motorcycle… Unless I’m not understanding it.

  AFAIK gravity waves are ripples in actual space (mechanical waves) - not a property of “gravitons”.

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  • Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Gravitons are the name for the quanta of the (hypothetical) quantum gravitational field. They’d be the force carriers of the gravitational force in a theory of quantum gravity, if we had one.

    Gravitational waves would still be physical waves like water waves, and they’d be composed of moving gravitons. Spacetime would likely be quantized instead of continuous; this becomes very hard to resolve since quantum mechanics needs to be reformulated to use discrete math instead of calculus, and we don’t really know how to do that (non-uniform spacetime breaks QM).

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    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s why I think the article is confused. They seem to think the gravity waves are a property of gravitons.

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      • Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah, not disagreeing there!

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      • btaf45@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        They seem to think the gravity waves are a property of gravitons.

        The article talks about gravitational waves, not gravity waves. It is believed that gravitational radiation is similar to electromagnetic radiation. This would mean that gravitational waves are made up of particles called gravitons. But as the article says, we don't know that for sure because we haven't been able to detect gravitons yet.

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  • btaf45@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Gravity waves are completely different from gravitational waves.

    https://coco1453.wordpress.com/home/gravity-related-terms/

    Gravitational waves are not 'mechanical waves'. It is thought that gravitational radiation is a lot like electromagnetic radiation. Therefore gravitational waves might work like light waves, and have a particle like light does.

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    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ah! Thanks! I wasn’t aware there was a difference!

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      • btaf45@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Common mistake

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  • CadeJohnson@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    maybe space is the graviton field itself(!), but maybe there is a graviton field (or is it the Higgs field?) and gravitons (and Higgs particles?) are excitations of that field; like other particles are excitations of their various postulated quantum fields

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