Overview of Horava Gravity for Laymen

[windy miller]

Can anyone give a good overview of Horava gravity for a layman. I have only read one thing on it in the Scientific American going back to 2009. Where does it stand today ? How is it understood? Wha are its strengths and weaknesses?

 

[jim mcnamara]

See the references at the bottom of the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hořava–Lifshitz_gravity

And the last line says

Hořava's initial formulation was found to have side-effects such as predicting very different results for a spherical Sun compared to a slightly non-spherical Sun, so others have modified the theory. Inconsistencies remain.

The most recent peer-reviewed article in the list discusses 'pathology' - that was 7 years ago. My unprofessional, unqualified-to-comment answer: it has serious problems, and looks like it may stay in that category. I see in this Biological literature searches sometimes, a cool idea destroyed by unfriendly facts. This looks a priori to be somewhat like that. Hopefully a definitive statement is forthcoming from someone who knows.

But with 'revolutionary theories' in past popular literature you can often discern possible dropouts by looking at references and citations to the starting sources and see if something is withering on the vine. The articles trail dries up right where someone demonstrates major problems. Scientists do not want to spend time on a possibly dead-ended pursuit. I personally do not.

You can what I did, and you can do this easily, as well. The point of this post: defining a sometimes viable method to see the status of some past theories and research.

 

[windy miller]

I did a search on google scholar articles on it and divided it up into two periods, the first 4 years it got 2210 articles. the next four years 2240. So I'm not sure what your justification is for saying the article trail dries up.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Okay, then I'm wrong. That's okay, the method still has applications, you just used it to refute what I said. We both learned something.

One extremely important point - arXiv articles are NOT peer-reviewed unless the reference shows it was published in a reputable journal. Big difference.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Even if it has been peer reviewed it doesn't mean there aren't mistake still lurking there.