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Originally Posted by xelasnave
Yes indeed my view is formed no doubt from my desire to have a "mechanical" explanation and so particles speculated upon such as a graviton are of interest.... however it was not I that came up with the graviton or the boson and the fact that others greater than I have arrived at such hypothesis does not make my thoughts out of bounds.
The premise of general relativity is very much as you suggest things may be..it just is.... if asked for a simple explanation of general relativity one could answer that it is a concept that attributes space with certain properties "that just are" particularly that space is "bent" by mass.
The geometry lets us then look at gravity as little more than the shortest path between two objects with mass and this "shortest" distance is in effect the result of the bending of space.
However at the risk of over simplification what we deal with is a geometric construct with no reference to how space does what we attribute to its working.
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Alex,
I think your attributing too much importance to the existence of a particle in considering gravitational forces. The effects of these forces can quite happily be described without knowing the properties of any supposed carrier particle.
Consider the boat in the river. Studying the composition of a water molecule alone will tell you nothing about the river's speed and course. The speed and course of a river varies primarily according to external factors (e.g. incline and contour of the valley).
Consider another analogy. A tornado whisks a car up and throws it some 100 m away. Is the idea of a messenger particle relevant to this action? Not really. Sure, the air is composed of molecules but these molecules exist even when the tornado doesn't. The molecules constitute the air flow but the air flow is a result of extraneous factors (e.g. heat of the Sun on land and water). Studying the composition of an air molecule (and there are many different types of molecule) won't tell you why the car landed over their. Studying the holistic behaviour of a mass of air molecules and the forces it produces is relevant. This behaviour largely depends on differences in air temperature and pressure around regions and patterns are studied over time to make predictions.
If there is a graviton then how important will it be to a description of the forces due to gravity? Like a single air molecule, a description about the graviton itself will not lead to a description of the path of a moving body. The gravitons in a field, like air molecules, might exert a force (if that is what they do) but the movement of gravitons will be governed by the dynamics created by surrounding bodies of mass. It is essentially a study of gravitational field theory that describes the motion. Although the existence of a graviton would be highly interesting as a component of the particle physics of the Universe, it is still mass that governs motion. The bigger the mass, the bigger the influence.
Is the graviton a messenger particle? Not any more than than a molecule caught up in a flow of air.
So, incline and contours determine the river flow, temperature and pressure determine the air flow and mass determines the gravitational "flow". General Relativity describes this flow. The particles of the flow (if they exist) are a different matter and that's an unintended pun.
Regards, Rob