Thread: Is the speed of gravity altered by a medium?

The speed of gravity is thought to be the speed of light. Light has a maximum speed in a vacuum but can be considerably slower when traversing a medium. If gravity is not affected by a medium, then its effects can be registered in advance of the light arrival if the light had to travel even temporarily through a medium. Gravity waves may arrive much sooner than light from a supernova and the correlation might be missed. The gravity effects may correlate better with neutrino arrival. However there may be special mediums that do modify the inertial effects associated with gravity. The presence of superfluid Helium either in liquid or supersolid form has been observed to lead to inertial anomalies. The Tate anomaly where the mass of a Cooper pair of electrons was measured to be significantly more massive than quantum mechanical predictions was the first anomaly to be noted in 1986. Later experiments exposing inertial anomalies were performed by Tajmar and also reported by Podkletnov. Under high pressure and very low temperatures supersolid Helium has been observed to give an inertial anomaly formally known as NCRI, or Non-Classical Rotational Inertia. The errors are several orders of magnitude greater than theory predicts. So is it the speed of gravity that is being affected in these examples or is the coefficient of inertia suffering some holographic magnification because non-locality is imposing dimensional constraints?

The only quantifiable anomaly here is the lack of real-time lab test data. If you apply quantum mechanics (those "assumed" to be in play).. there is insufficient data or even equipment to identify ANY of the "principles" that you apparently assume to be solid data. Speculative science.. Quantum theory, etc is just that.. speculative and theoretical. Heisenberg is VERY operative in this statement. To observe, on the quantum level, where gravity is "assumed" to originate, is to probably alter the observed item, thereby rendering observable data realistically unusable or at least unreliable. Non-focal is a good point to amplify this very thought. If you don't positively KNOW where a sub-atomic particle IS, how do you quantify it/them? The "a speed of gravity" is a very strange idea. 32 feet per second, per second, is all well and good.. on Earth. What about 1 nanometer from an event horizon?

I'm pretty sure gravity waves go at the same speed as light. ( at the cosmic scale )

remember - it is the space curvature that defines the speed of light. the "propagation" of space curvature by an event is limited in the same way.

Light is usually curved and bent and sometimes scattered and re-scattered before it arrives to earth, which explains the delay when observing supernovae.

Orion is right - asking what the speed of gravity is on an atomic level is a meaningless question. no current model of understanding is useful in analyzing that question.

for reference - i got my undergrad in physics with a concentration in high energy astrophysics. ( my authority is therefore significantly less reliable than a "real" astronomer )

Sir, I do not believe that gravity, nor the space-time continuum, "propagates" in any known fashion. That would presuppose a source point.. where would that be? It is true that light (photons) can be bent in this gravitational curvature of 3D space, hence "gravity lensing" and the factual observable light behind an (or extremely distant) object directly in its path. Do you believe that the speed of light is the ultimate universal speed limit (including computational quantum physics)? How do neutrinos exceed same? Why is there a demarcation focal point of an "event horizon"? Do objects caught in this extreme gravity well just disappear (at this event horizon) and give up their entire energy as ..? or do they exceed the speed of light and go... somewhere else in the quantum world? Parallel universe? 13th dimension? Fascinating stuff, this.