B Theory about gravitons and space warping

[CallMeDirac]

TL;DR Summary

What if gravity is like the Higg's field and boson

We know about the Higg's field and boson, so what if gravity is the same.
There has long been a dispute as to weather gravity is a field or a particle.
Why can't it be like the Higg's boson.

 

[Interested user]

I see your query and from my understanding, gravity is a force. We see this in Newtons law, "An object in motion will stay in motion until another force acts upon it." Gravity, along with many others, is considered one of these forces.

 

[CallMeDirac]

I see your query and from my understanding, gravity is a force. We see this in Newtons law, "An object in motion will stay in motion until another force acts upon it." Gravity, along with many others, is considered one of these forces.

The Higg's boson is a force carrier particle like a Photon, so is the theorized Graviton.

 

[PeterDonis]

from my understanding, gravity is a force.

Not in relativity or quantum mechanics, no. In relativity gravity is spacetime curvature, not a force at all. We don't have a good quantum theory of gravity, but the general quantum treatment of "forces" is not the same as the Newtonian one.

 

[PeterDonis]

The Higg's boson is a force carrier particle like a Photon, so is the theorized Graviton.

So what is your question? You are evidently aware that there are theoretical models of gravitons. Are you asking what the current status of those models is?

 

[CallMeDirac]

So what is your question? You are evidently aware that there are theoretical models of gravitons. Are you asking what the current status of those models is?

I am wondering why there is such difference between a graviton and a gravity field and why it isn't the same as the Higg's boson and field.

 

[PeterDonis]

I am wondering why there is such difference between a graviton and a gravity field

What difference are you talking about?

why it isn't the same as the Higg's boson and field.

Why do you think it isn't?

 

[CallMeDirac]

What difference are you talking about?
Why do you think it isn't?

I've just always heard that there is an argument as to weather gravity is a field or a particle. I was wondering why it's never presented as the same as the Higg's boson and field

Congrats by the way on the hall of legends by the way

 

[Drakkith]

I've just always heard that there is an argument as to weather gravity is a field or a particle. I was wondering why it's never presented as the same as the Higg's boson and field

Asking if gravity is a field or a particle is like asking if electromagnetism is a field or a particle, and the answer is that it is a field whose excitations are quantized and are called photons. The problem with gravity, if my understanding is correct, is that it is much more self-interacting. That is, excitations in the gravitational field, which we would call gravitons, have energy, which means they have mass, which means that they all interact with each other since objects with mass interact via gravitation. This self-interaction means there is further energy and mass in the field, which leads to more interaction. And you get stuck with things quickly spiraling out of control into infinities everywhere.

 

[PeterDonis]

I've just always heard...

Where? Please give a specific reference.

there is an argument as to weather gravity is a field or a particle.

This doesn't really make sense. "Field" and "particle" are not two different kinds of things according to our current understanding of quantum field theory. They're just two different names for the same thing. "Field" is the more common name--more specifically, "quantum field"--and "particle" is usually taken to mean a certain type of state of a quantum field. So it doesn't make sense to ask whether anything "is" a field or a particle; at most it might make sense to ask whether a particular physical phenomenon has a useful description in terms of particle-like states of quantum fields, or not.

The particular issue with gravity is that we don't have a good quantum theory for it, whereas we do have one for the other known interactions (strong, weak, electromagnetic, all well described by the Standard Model). We know it is mathematically possible to construct a quantum field theory for a massless, spin-2 field; this field would be the "graviton" field, and particle-like states of it would be "gravitons". And the field equation for this theory, in the classical limit, is the Einstein Field Equation of General Relativity, so mathematically this quantum field theory would be a natural extension of GR to a QFT, just as quantum electrodynamics is the natural extension of classical Maxwell electrodynamics to a QFT (the field equation of QED in the classical limit is Maxwell's Equations).

However, the QFT of a massless spin-2 field just described is not renormalizable (unlike QED and the rest of the Standard Model, which is), and any quantum effects it predicts for gravity would not be observable unless we could do experiments at the Planck scale, which we can't now and won't be able to for the foreseeable future. So this theory doesn't really offer any hope of being a useful quantum theory of gravity.

Furthermore, this QFT is a QFT on a background flat spacetime, which ends up predicting that that background flat spacetime is unobservable; the observable spacetime geometry is the curved spacetime geometry described by the classical limit of the theory (which, as noted, is just GR). It would be much nicer to have a quantum theory that just gave us curved spacetime GR directly as a classical limit, without having to make any assumptions at all about a background spacetime. This is the sort of theory that efforts like loop quantum gravity are working on.

I was wondering why it's never presented as the same as the Higg's boson and field

Because none of the issues I described above arise at all for the Higgs boson and the Higgs field. The Higgs field and the Higgs boson are perfectly well described by the current Standard Model.

Congrats by the way on the hall of legends

Thanks!

 

[PeroK]

There has long been a dispute as to weather gravity is a field or a particle.

... as to weather gravity ...

I think you mean "whether".

 

[CallMeDirac]

I think you mean "whether".

I always mix weather and whether as wheather. lol