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Nov 98
To Bryan:
Keep on asking those great questions. I hope this inspires you to ask more! Live Long + Prosper! L. M. Krauss |
A friend and I went to a nearby university to see a presentation
by Dr. Krauss. When it was over, I went up to him and asked him a
question that a friend of mine at work had posed to me some 6 years earlier.
Me: I know that this is going to seem like a dumb question, but a friend and I couldn't decide it: If the sun were to instantly disappear (that's the dumb part), would the Earth instantly fly off in a tangent to its orbit, or would it takes 8 minutes before it flew off in a tangent? Krauss: That's not a dumb question at all! We ask stuff like that all the time. M: 'Cause it seemed to us that if it flew off instantly, then gravity would be faster than light. But if it took 8 minutes, then it's a particle of somesort, and therefore a wave. Waves have troughs as well as peaks, so the Earth should oscillate a little bit in gravity/anti-gravity ripples. Which means that there's anti-gravity. K: Very good! And that would be true, except that for that to happen, gravitons would have to have spin 2, and gravitons only come in spin 1. M: Of course! I don't know what I was thinking.
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