Quote:
Originally Posted by bindibadgi
It was high school stuff until Einstein came along. It's not so simple any more, and skwinty hasn't actually got it wrong. It causes many headaches!
Back to the discussion though, if we think in terms of information, we have a problem with the effects of gravity being felt instantaneously. If a huge galaxy suddenly swung by our neighbourhood, and we felt the effect before we could see it, then we have information traveling faster than light. I don't think Einstein would be pleased!
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Always someone has to spoil the party
No, all it just means is that the information that's being carried by the gravitational field has arrived earlier than the information brought by its light. One just happens to be faster than the other. It just means that Einstein was "wrong" in thinking that light was the cosmic "speed limit", in so far as any information that was being sent to an observer. He is correct for visual information (light) but not for gravitational information, in this particular case (given the new interpretation in the paper mentioned).
In actual fact, neither condition is in violation of SR or GR, if you don't accept that light is the fastest carrier of information. In both their respective instances, neither light nor gravity can travel at infinite velocity in spacetime. That would be breaking SR and GR. What's being proposed is a modification and extension of SR and GR. People assume that both those theories at present are complete. They're not. Einstein himself never considered them as such.
To prove if this was correct or not, you could setup an experiment or make an observation of something where this process might be happening.