Does Relative Speed Affect Gravitational Attraction?

cragar
Messages
2,546
Reaction score
3
If i am moving at a constant speed and i see someone moving towards me , According to relativity i can't tell if I'm moving or they are moving. But if the heavier person is moving towards me they would have more kinetic energy and a stronger gravitational field, then if i was moving and they were stationary. So would the total Gravitational attraction between us be constant.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
No one has anything on this
 
Regardless of whether you consider yourself as moving, or the object as moving, the measurements you can actually make will turn out the same.

The "gravitational field" of a hyper-relativistic object will approach that of an impulsive gravitational plane wave, similar to the way the electric field of a hyper-relativistic charge approaches an impulsive electromagnetic plane wave.

"Gravitational field" is an ambiguous term, in this case I am using it to mean tidal gravity, something you can actually measure (i.e. for example with a Forward mass detector, or a gravitational gradient meter (typically a rotating cruciform gravitational gradiometer) like those they use to survey for oil with.

http://www.bellgeo.com/tech/technology_theory_of_FTG.html

This is probably NOT what you're used to thinking of as the gravitational field, but if you consider the problem of the Moon's gravitational field effect on the Earth, you can perhaps see that we don't measure the Newtonian field directly, what we actually observe are time-varying tidal forces.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for your answer.
 
In this video I can see a person walking around lines of curvature on a sphere with an arrow strapped to his waist. His task is to keep the arrow pointed in the same direction How does he do this ? Does he use a reference point like the stars? (that only move very slowly) If that is how he keeps the arrow pointing in the same direction, is that equivalent to saying that he orients the arrow wrt the 3d space that the sphere is embedded in? So ,although one refers to intrinsic curvature...
ASSUMPTIONS 1. Two identical clocks A and B in the same inertial frame are stationary relative to each other a fixed distance L apart. Time passes at the same rate for both. 2. Both clocks are able to send/receive light signals and to write/read the send/receive times into signals. 3. The speed of light is anisotropic. METHOD 1. At time t[A1] and time t[B1], clock A sends a light signal to clock B. The clock B time is unknown to A. 2. Clock B receives the signal from A at time t[B2] and...
So, to calculate a proper time of a worldline in SR using an inertial frame is quite easy. But I struggled a bit using a "rotating frame metric" and now I'm not sure whether I'll do it right. Couls someone point me in the right direction? "What have you tried?" Well, trying to help truly absolute layppl with some variation of a "Circular Twin Paradox" not using an inertial frame of reference for whatevere reason. I thought it would be a bit of a challenge so I made a derivation or...
Back
Top