An Attractive Proposition -
Bert asks,
What gives you the idea gravity has a
charge connected to it? Why does this
charge not go like a good charge
should?(at c) Why instantaneously?
Bert, this has been discussed at length many times over the y'ars. The
word "charge" has several connotations. One is the one you're thinking
of, like a potential or "static" charge. Another is the verb form, like
to "charge" a battery.
But the 'charge' we're talkin' about here is in a
different context, the "flow of charge". By analogy, a water-filled hose
is full of charge. A copper wire is full of charge, the charge of
unmoving electrons.
A water pump will cause the charge in the hose to
flow. A battery, generator, or solar cell is a charge pump that will
move the charge in the wire, causing an electric flow.
When you switch the waterpump on, the flow is
functionally, for all practical purposes, instantaneous. The
instantaneity occurs everywhere along the flow path. When you throw the
light switch on, the flow of electric charge through the wires is
`functionally` instantaneous, and the light comes on "instantly".
Of course the analogy is imperfect, as all analogies
are. There `is` a tiny time lag in the water hose analogy due to the
speed of sound in water, and a tiny time lag in the light switch
analogy. But the point of the analogy is to illustrate instantaneity of
charge everywhere along the flow path.
So how does 'speed of charge' apply to gravity? In
the spaceflow of a gravity well, say the Sun's, instantaneity of charge
is present everywhere along the flow path from the outermost fringes of
the Sun's gravity well all the way down to the Sun's surface. The flow
path is unbroken, continuous and contiguous at Mercury's orbit, at
Venus', at Earth's, at Mars', at Jupiter's, all the way out to Pluto's
and beyond.
The *one flow* intersects ALL THE PLANETS' ORBITS with
*absolute instantaneity*.
If it did not, IF the speed of gravitational charge,
the 'speed of gravity', were anyting less than infinite, it would
introduce "aberration" of the orbits, tilting them backward slightly,
and they would spiral outward over time.
The stability of planetary orbits over billions of
years is dynamic testimony that the 'speed of gravity' aka speed of
gravitational charge, is indeed 'functionally' instantaneous just as
Newton originally observed.
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The instantaneity is not just in the time domain but
the spatial domain as well, everywhere along the flow path. In the
bathtub analogy (again), the flow going down the drainhole is "in
instantaneity", in both the time and spatial domains, with the flow at
the outermost edges of the tub.
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