Forums before death by AOL, social media and spammers... "We can't have nice things"
|    sci.physics.research    |    Current physics research. (Moderated)    |    17,520 messages    |
[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]
|    Message 16,385 of 17,520    |
|    Tom Roberts to Sabbir Rahman    |
|    Re: Dark energy, dark matter and negativ    |
|    01 Nov 18 22:21:55    |
      From: tjroberts137@sbcglobal.net              On 10/31/18 1:05 AM, Sabbir Rahman wrote:       > In general people have to be more specific when they refer to "negative       > mass". There are three mass types that enter into Newton's law of       > gravitation for example - inertial, active and passive mass.              Sure. But the context here is General Relativity, not Newton. In GR       there is just a single "type" of mass: that which enters into the       energy-momentum tensor in the field equation.              If one considers the motion of a "test particle" [#], then in the       absence of any forces the particle follows a timelike geodesic path in       the geometry determined by the (non-negligible) masses in the manifold.       Note the mass of the test particle does not enter into its equation of       motion (including its sign, if any).               [#] An object whose size and mass are very much smaller        than the scale of the geometry, so it can be neglected in        determining the geometry.              > [... 8 or 4 possibilities in Newtonian gravitation]              But Newtonian gravitation is not very interesting, as it is solidly       refuted. Nor is it relevant in this discussion in the context of GR.              For a test particle and a mass, in GR there are only two cases: the mass       is negative or the mass is positive. For these cases the structure of       the geometry is known: for positive mass the geodesics converge on the       mass, and for negative mass the geodesics diverge from the mass.               Note that many authors consider at least one of the energy        conditions to be part of GR, so the case of negative mass        is excluded. Here, for the sake of discussion, I ignore the        energy conditions.              > If antimatter falls upwards [...]               [I note that you switched from negative mass to antimatter        -- these are VERY different.]              Attempting to argue about GR by analogy with NM is hopeless -- that boat       has already sailed. For test particles the GR prediction is unambiguous:       regardless of the test particle's mass (including sign, if any) it       "falls downward" toward a positive mass and "falls upward" away from a       negative mass.              While there is currently no experimental evidence of antimatter's       behavior in gravity, the mass of every known antiparticle is       unequivocally positive.               [There are theoretical arguments that imply that in        gravity antimatter must behave essentially the same        as matter. There are several efforts underway to        measure its behavior experimentally.]              Note also that antimatter is described ONLY in quantum theories; no       classical theory includes it. So it is stretching the boundaries to       consider antimatter in GR.              For two massive objects there are clearly four choices of their masses'       signs in GR, but I don't know how the math works out for any case except       "++", in which case they converge together. Given the absence of a       general 2-body solution to the field equation, the other 3 cases require       numerical calculations; I don't know how they work out [@]. I also don't       consider them very relevant, as we have yet to observe anything with a       negative mass, much less an object large enough to affect the geometry.               [@] I also know enough about the subtleties of GR to not        believe any claims without a calculation to back them up.              > [... non-mathematical speculations about black holes]              Your discussion here goes well beyond GR, seemingly into never-never       land. To support it you need to formulate a complete theory, not just       give idle speculations based on a fuzzy mish-mash of GR and a very       different and refuted Newtonian theory. That's a challenge, as there is       no expectation of ever being able to test it experimentally.              Tom Roberts              --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05        * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)    |
[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]
(c) 1994, bbs@darkrealms.ca