Ripples in reality

[gkc2294]

If, according to Einstein, that space-time is a "fabric", could there be waves in this "fabric"?

[Simon_Tyler]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave

[gkc2294]

thanks man.

[brainstorm]

I also wonder if light can't be explained as moving magnetic fields, which themselves may be slight waves in the "fabric."

[Antiphon]

Moving electric and magnetic fields both. It's not thought that the electromagnetic fields are ripples in the fabric of space but actually there are suggestions that this could be the case.

The most tantalizing such suggestion is this: if you work through Einstein's equations for ripples in the fabric of space but you use 5 dimensions instead of 4, the equations that descrlighthearted movement of light also appear.

This kind of thinking has been carried forward over the century and joined with another great theory in physics called quantum mechanics to produce the best attempts we have to describe the universe. The number of dimensions has gone up from 4 to 10 or 11, so your intuition is good.

[Antiphon]

Blast autocompletion and the iPhone app on this site.

Descrlighthearted should read "describe the movement of" but I can't edit the post because the window won't scroll down.

[brainstorm]

Magnetic fields do not require a medium, so they are the best candidate, imo, for explaining the ability of electromagnetic radiation to transmit energy without a medium. What I want to figure out is how the electrostatic force of electrons occurs. Is it a combination of the repulsion of negative-negative electron charges and their momentum or something else completely?