Extreme Gravity Waves: A Phenomenon That Can Alter Time on Earth

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of extreme gravitational waves and their potential effects on time as experienced on Earth. Participants explore theoretical scenarios involving gravitational waves that could significantly alter the flow of time, including notions of time stopping or moving infinitely fast. The conversation touches on various interpretations of gravitational wave phenomena, their implications in general relativity, and the nature of time itself.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants propose that gravitational waves could cause time to speed up or slow down as they pass Earth, questioning the possibility of extreme cases where time could stop or move infinitely fast.
  • Others introduce the concept of pp-wave spacetimes and singularities, suggesting that certain conditions in general relativity could lead to significant effects on time.
  • A participant questions the interpretation of "time stopping," noting that it may depend on observer-specific coordinate choices and is not clearly defined in physical terms.
  • There is discussion about event horizons and their relationship to time perception from different reference points, with some suggesting that time can appear to "stop" at these horizons.
  • One participant emphasizes the need for rigorous mathematical interpretation of the original question, while others express confusion about the phrasing and seek clarification.
  • Concerns are raised about the practicality of detecting gravitational waves through time dilation effects, with some asserting that such detection methods are unworkable.
  • Questions are posed about the physical experience of being within a gravitational wave and whether it could allow for movement across the universe, with responses indicating that such movement is not feasible.
  • There is a speculative idea presented about the nature of gravitational waves as expanding spherical shells and their potential effects on observers outside the wave.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on the nature of gravitational waves and their effects on time, with no clear consensus reached. Disagreements arise regarding the feasibility of extreme time dilation and the physical implications of being within a gravitational wave.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the ambiguity in defining "time stopping" and the dependence on observer-specific frames of reference. The discussion also highlights the complexity of interpreting gravitational wave phenomena within the framework of general relativity.

magi
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Hi.

When a gravity wave pass Earth then the time goes a little faster and/or slower.
Can there be a phenomenon in the universe that create a gravity wave that is so curved,
that when it pass earth, the time stop or go infinitely fast?

Regards Magi

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There are pp-wave spacetimes with a lightlike singularity. I don't know much about them but they are sometimes known as a "wave of death".
 
magi said:
--

Hi.

When a gravity wave pass Earth then the time goes a little faster and/or slower.
Can there be a phenomenon in the universe that create a gravity wave that is so curved,
that when it pass earth, the time stop or go infinitely fast?

Regards Magi

--

It's unclear how to interpret the original question, I'm not aware of any clear physically significant notion of what it would mean for "time to stop". Some notions of "time-stopping" might be based on time-coordinates, which depend on the observer and their coordinate choices, other notions of "time stopping" might be based on legacy ideas of "absolute time" that are not compatible with special relativity.

A question that is closely related that should be able to be answered more directly is whether gravitational wave space-times ave the same causal structure as the flat space-time of special relativity. I believe the answer to this is no. See for instance

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0211195
Interestingly, as shown by Penrose in [2], plane wavespacetimes are not globally hyperbolic

I'm not sure how to accurately describe "not globally hyperbolic" in lay terms, a rather imprecise translation would be "not causal". Having closed time-like curves is one way space-times can fail to be globally hyperbolic, but there are other ways.
 
You chose the "A" (advanced) level prefix for this thread, which would imply that you want a mathematical answer pitched at the graduate level, but the question is phrased in a nonmathematical way, so I assume the first thing we need to do is to interpret your question into more rigorous mathematical language.

One way, which is I think what DaleSpam had in mind in #2, was to interpret this as a question about a singularity. Then the answer is that singularities are a generic outcome in GR -- in some sense "most" initial conditions will lead to singularities, so the answer to your question is guaranteed to be yes.

Another possible interpretation is that you're asking about event horizons -- an event horizon is a place where time does in some loose verbal sense "stop" as "seen" by a distant observer (scare quotes because these words don't really mean anything rigorous).

The interpretation I had from reading your question is that you were asking about degeneracy of the metric. The most common situation that occurs is that we get some solution to the Einstein field equations, such as the Schwarzschild solution written in Schwarzschild coordinates, and it has a coordinate singularity in it, where the metric becomes degenerate. Since it's only a coordinate singularity, it can be removed by a better choice of coordinates. However, there is no guarantee that a metric degeneracy cannot actually happen physically. The standard formulation of GR doesn't work when the metric is degenerate, since, e.g., we always assume that we can raise and lower tensor indices at will. However, there are other formulations of GR, such as the Ashtekar formulation, that are equivalent to the standard one under normal conditions but do allow degeneracy of the metric. So I think the answer is that we don't know whether metric degeneracy is possible, and it's probably not even clear how to interpret such a possibility physically. E.g., if the metric signature becomes 0+++ or ++++ somewhere, then measurement processes presumably become impossible there, and it becomes problematic to associate the predictions of the theory with any type of observation.
 
Last edited:
bcrowell said:
You chose the "A" (advanced) level prefix for this thread, which would imply that you want a mathematical answer pitched at the graduate level, but the question is phrased in a nonmathematical way, so I assume the first thing we need to do is to interpret your question into more rigorous mathematical language.

In the meantime, I edited the thread prefix down to "B" because it appeared to me that the question was looking for a more qualitative and heuristic answer.
 
Ok.

I rewrite it.When a gravity wave pass Earth then the time goes a little faster and/or slower.
Can there be a phenomenon in the universe that create a gravity wave that is so curved,
that when it pass earth, the time almost stop (99%) or go almost infinitely fast(99%)?

Regards Magi

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Did you read the responses? I don't think that your rewrite changes any of the responses. Maybe you should reply to whatever you found helpful or confusing.
 
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What I am interested in is what happens if there is gravity waves that is so intense that the time stop or go infinitely fast,
when it pass the Earth and us.
Can we detect the gravity wave by detecting the time stop or jumps ahead.

And another question.
When I am in this gravity wave when it go through me.
Am I spread out in the whole gravity wave that instance?
Can I use it to move to another place in the universe?

I have other questions in this area but let's start with this and see where we end up.Regards

Magnus
 
magi said:
What I am interested in is what happens if there is gravity waves that is so intense that the time stop or go infinitely fast,

Time is a purely local concept, so you need to specify with regards to which reference point you consider the time dilation. A single clock is never "dilated" locally in its own frame, you need at least two clocks for that.

I believe what you are asking about is just how much gravitational time dilation a passing GW front(s) can realistically induce in the relationship between a local clock, and a reference clock somewhere far away. Would that be right ?
 
  • #10
magi said:
What I am interested in is what happens if there is gravity waves that is so intense that the time stop or go infinitely fast
No.
Can we detect the gravity wave by detecting the time stop or jumps ahead?
Maybe in principle, but in practice that approach is completely unworkable. If you google for "gravitational wave detection" you'll find some stuff about how gravitational wave detectors work.

When I am in this gravity wave when it go through me.
Am I spread out in the whole gravity wave that instance?
That will depend on the wavelength of the wave. All the gravitational waves that we expect to detect in the general vicinity of the Earth will have wavelengths that are long compared with most human bodies, so yes, your entire body will be "in" the wave... Not that you'd feel it or anything.
Can I use it to move to another place in the universe?
No, of course not. All that happens is that there is a tiny change in the gravitational force you feel for just a moment. And it really is tiny - much smaller than the change you feel from one moment to the next because the moon is moving so pulling you in a slightly different direction from one moment to the next.
 
  • #11
The gravity wave is created from a exploding star or something, and the gravity wave then spreading out in all directions like a balloon surface when it is filled with air.
The gravity wave(ballon surface) pass through us.
If time goes infinitely fast when we are inside the gravity wave then the universe outside the wave stop.
The people outside the wave see us inside moving all over in the wave that is spread in the universe like a spherical shell, expanding with the speed of light.

Can we play with this idea ?

I will tell you where I am going with this idea if people here can follow my thought.Regards
 
  • #12
magi said:
The gravity wave is created from a exploding star or something
an exploding star doesn't produce gravitational waves at all due to the spherical symmetry. You need a quadrupole source at the least.
 
  • #13
The gravity wave is created from an exploding supernova ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.0779 ) in the universe, and the gravity wave then spreading out in all directions like a balloon surface when it is filled with air.
The gravity wave(ballon surface) pass through us.
If time goes infinitely fast when we are inside the gravity wave then the universe outside the wave stop.
The people outside the wave see us inside moving all over in the wave that is spread in the universe like a spherical shell, expanding with the speed of light.

Can we play with this idea ?

I will tell you where I am going with this idea if people here can follow my thought.Are someone following me here?

Magnus
 
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  • #15
magi said:
If time goes infinitely fast when we are inside the gravity wave then the universe outside the wave stop.
The people outside the wave see us inside moving all over in the wave
Nothing of the sort happens. Time does not go infinitely fast when we are inside the wave (and we're only inside it for a fraction of a second) and the universe outside the wave does not stop.

Can we play with this idea ?
I will tell you where I am going with this idea if people here can follow my thought.
You may not play with this idea here - the Physics Forums rules prohibit personal speculation not supported by real science.
 
  • #16
If we were doing the skit from "Dave Berry does Japan", (if you search for "No, I want to take a plane Dave Berry" without the quotes, it should return a google books hit on pg 37), I'd be the travel agent saying "Perhaps you would prefer to take a train", and magi would be the American tourist (Beth) saying, "No, I want to take a plane!". The underlying issue in the skit is that there's only one airport per island in Japan, making the tourist's request for a plane ticket between different cities on the same island nonsensical. The American tourist has a backgroud where most cities have an airport, the situation on the island is quite different than what the tourist is used to. The physical issues here are more complex than the somewhat silly skit, perhaps there COULD be some interpretation of the question that makes sense. But it's not obvious at this point what that interpretation is, so we have a similar communication issue.
 
  • #17
pervect said:
(if you search for "No, I want to take a plane Dave Berry" without the quotes, it should return a google books hit on pg 37

Now, that is some serious Google-fu!
 
  • #18
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I try again.

1. Does the time slow down or run faster for a moment, when the gravity wave pass Earth ?
2. Can there be something in the universe that create a gravity wave, that is so extreme, that time almost stop or almost go infinitely fast,
when the gravity wave pass Earth ?
3. Can somebody here imagine what would happen if there was a gravity wave that stop time or make the time go infinitely fast,
when the gravity wave pass Earth ?
Regards MagI
 
  • #19
Is it a bot? :wideeyed:
 
  • #20
Thread closed for Moderation...
 
  • #21
This thread will remain closed. Magi, please read all the responses you've been given.
 
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