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WhatIsGravity
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- TL;DR Summary
- Wanting to research big G
I'm wondering if any of the physics Jedi out there might know of any credible papers that suggest big G and/or the cosmological (dark energy) aren't constant through time?
I believe the convention is to treat DE as a more general term, with CC and Quintessence being more specific subsets.Ibix said:I don't think the term "cosmological constant" is used much any more. Dark energy, which has more or less the same effect, is so named at least partly because we're not certain that its density is constant. "Quintessence" is the name of one model that allows it to vary.
Ibix said:Big G isn't a thing that can be constant or not in any meaningful way - it's basically a unit conversion factor.
Ibix said:Big G isn't a thing that can be constant or not in any meaningful way - it's basically a unit conversion factor.
Fair enough - I was under the impression that dark energy was the preferred term rather than an umbrella term. Apparently I misunderstood.Bandersnatch said:I believe the convention is to treat DE as a more general term, with CC and Quintessence bein
At least in GR, ##c## is the ratio between [L] and [T] units and is typically set to 1. Then you can fix ##G## as 1 too by picking appropriate units, so it's a conversion factor between [M] and whichever of [L] and [T] you kept when you fixed ##c##. @PeterDonis explains why that's not generally correct above (although I think I'm going to need to get around to learning QFT and QG to actually understand him). I do recall that someone I've read (I thought it was Carroll, but can't find it if it was) did observe that they didn't approve of setting ##G## to 1, although they were happy to set ##c## to 1. It struck me as inconsistent at the time, but maybe this was the reason.Vanadium 50 said:I don't think I agree. Which units? kilograms, meters, and seconds are all defined non-gravitationally.
Ibix said:I'd be surprised if the mass unit were defined gravitationally.
I'm aware. Vanadium50 seemed to be implying that this was evidence that ##G## could not be a unit conversion factor like ##c##. My point was that even if it were reasonable to base a unit system on ##G## (and you and Haelfix have explained why it isn't), I would not expect metrologists to accept a number so imprecisely known as part of such a unit system. I was questioning his inference process, not his start or end point.PeterDonis said:In SI units, it isn't. The latest definition of the kilogram is based on setting Planck's constant to a fixed value.
Ibix said:Vanadium50 seemed to be implying that this was evidence that ##G## could not be a unit conversion factor like cc.
Ibix said:On the subject of unit definitions, though, even if my argument were correct, I'd be surprised if the mass unit were defined gravitationally. Our measurement of ##G## is much less precise than other fundamental constants, so a definition based on it would mean a large uncertainty in the definition of the unit of mass. I don't think it would be acceptable to metrologists.
Vanadium 50 said:I don't think I agree. Which units? kilograms, meters, and seconds are all defined non-gravitationally.
WhatIsGravity said:In GR at least, units for a gravitational gradient are 1/s^2.
PeterDonis said:What do you mean by "gravitational gradient"?
WhatIsGravity said:The change in gravity/acceleration in regards to a change in distance.
hutchphd said:Getting back to the original question may I direct the OP historically to Dirac and his immediate progenitors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_large_numbers_hypothesis
PeterDonis said:The proper name for this is "tidal gravity" or "spacetime curvature". Its units are more usually given as inverse meters squared instead of inverse seconds squared.
WhatIsGravity said:Can't yet wrap my brain around how 1/m^2 in regards to a gravity (position) gradient is also (equally?) expressed as 1/s^2
WhatIsGravity said:Any papers or especially experiments on a massless spin-2 field you might suggest
PeterDonis said:The units of ##G## in QFT do happen to be the same as the units of spacetime curvature (in QFT units, inverse length squared is the same as mass squared), but that's not because they're the same thing. It's because ##G## is the coupling constant in the Lagrangian for the QFT of a massless spin-2 field, and the field itself appears in the Lagrangian as the Ricci curvature. Each term in the Lagrangian density has units of ##\text{mass}^4##, since the Lagrangian density gets integrated over all of spacetime to get the action and the action is dimensionless.
WhatIsGravity said:I guess now I'm wondering how a gravitational field, unlike the Higgs, might be defined without a gradient (spacetime) dependent field?
PeterDonis said:I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking.
WhatIsGravity said:I guess I was wondering how gravity might be defined, simplistically speaking, without the 1/r^2 term. Basically tidal gravity.
WhatIsGravity said:I can't yet wrap my brain around how gravity doesn't necessarily need a gradient in spacetime as a reference.
Dynamics of the cosmological and Newton’s constantWhatIsGravity said:Summary:: Wanting to research big G
I'm wondering if any of the physics Jedi out there might know of any credible papers that suggest big G and/or the cosmological (dark energy) aren't constant through time?
Actually the correct talk isspacejunkie said:Dynamics of the cosmological and Newton’s constant
Lee Smolin
https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01229
Abstract
A modification of general relativity is presented in which Newton’s constant, G and the cosmological constant, Λ, become a conjugate pair of dynamical variables.Smolin did a talk on this paper at Perimeter:-
http://pirsa.org/18110064/
PAllen said:one of the standard forms of dimensionless gravitational coupling constants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_coupling_constantPeterDonis said:Which standard forms are these?
PAllen said:Structurally, they are very similar to the fine structure constant. The most common uses the mass of the electron, similar to using the charge for the fine structure constant.
You could define a coupling constant using the Planck mass instead of the electron mass. Further, even if you don't have clean separation, you know that something fundamental is varying, even when using the electron mass. Any variation of G itself is far more problematic to untangle, or even define without arbitrary unit choices.PeterDonis said:There's a key difference, though. The article puts it this way: "there is an arbitrariness in the choice of which particle's mass to use", whereas only one charge can be used to define the fine structure constant. What this really is is a manifestation of the fact that the fine structure constant is genuinely dimensionless, whereas there is no genuinely dimensionless coupling constant for gravity, at least not as we currently understand gravity. In QFT terms, we should not expect the coupling constant for gravity to be dimensionless since the QFT of a massless spin-2 field is not renormalizable; whereas we should expect the fine structure constant to be dimensionless since QED is renormalizable.
In terms of looking for variation, if we found evidence of variation of, say, the dimensionless gravitational coupling constant defined using the electron mass, we wouldn't know whether that was evidence of gravity itself varying or of the electron mass varying, since, as the article notes, the electron mass is due to the Higgs mechanism (according to our best current understanding), which is independent of gravity. There is no such ambiguity with regard to the fine structure constant: it is a "pure" coupling constant for electromagnetism, with no other mechanism involved, so if we found evidence of it varying over time, there would be only one possible interpretation.
Oops, you can't use Planck mass, because it is defined in terms of G, and if I work it all out, I get a coupling constant of identically 1 (ha ha).PAllen said:You could define a coupling constant using the Planck mass instead of the electron mass. Further, even if you don't have clean separation, you know that something fundamental is varying, even when using the electron mass. Any variation of G itself is far more problematic to untangle, or even define without arbitrary unit choices.
Dirac had opinion that G wasn't really constant through time. He formed that idea based on his "Large number hypothesis". Quick search will point to lot of papers like this oneWhatIsGravity said:Summary:: Wanting to research big G
I'm wondering if any of the physics Jedi out there might know of any credible papers that suggest big G and/or the cosmological (dark energy) aren't constant through time?
I do not wish to dispute this because I truly do not understand. The fine structure constant contains e2/ hc. How is this subject to a single interpretation if changing? Can e and c and h not change independently in principle? Does that not add impurity?PeterDonis said:There is no such ambiguity with regard to the fine structure constant: it is a "pure" coupling constant for electromagnetism, with no other mechanism involved, so if we found evidence of it varying over time, there would be only one possible interpretation.
hutchphd said:The fine structure constant contains e2/ hc.
hutchphd said:Can e and c and h not change independently in principle?