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The esteemed Crank o' the Day for 2026 Jan 11:
The Speed of Gravity: What the Experts Say
2002 Apr 21
... gravitation
. Einstein was wrong
...
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"Standard experimental techniques exist to determine the propagation speed of forces. When we apply these techniques to gravity, they all yield propagation speeds too great to measure, substantially faster than lightspeed. This is because gravity, in contrast to light, has no detectable aberration or propagation delay for its action, even for cases (such as binary pulsars) where sources of gravity accelerate significantly during the light time from source to target By contrast, the finite propagation speed of light causes radiation pressure forces to have a non-radial component causing orbits to decay (the 'Poynting-Robertson effect'); but gravity has no counterpart force proportional to v/c to first order. General relativity explains these features by suggesting that gravitation (unlike electromagnetic forces) is a pure geometric effect of curved space-time, not a force of nature that propagates. Gravitational radiation, which surely does propagate at lightspeed but is a fifth order effect in v/c, is too small to play a role in explaining this difference in behavior between gravity and ordinary forces of nature."
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