• gentooer@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Electromagnetism and gravity are both mediated by massless bosons; photons and gravitons respectively. This is why both forces follow the inverse square law.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think there’s any evidence for gravitons yet, and gravity hasn’t been quantized. I’d say it’s this similarity that’s the best argument of quantum gravity, not the other way around.

      • gentooer@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fair. The masslessness of the bosons that should mediate gravity, along with them being spin-2, can however be deduced from the properties of gravitational waves.

        • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          We know that gravity is a wave that travels at the speed of light, this has been experimentally measured many times. If it is also quantized (a very reasonable symptom hypothesis since everything else that we’ve ever seen is) then by definition there are particles that carry gravity.

          If gravity is continuous then we would end up with something like the ultraviolet catastrophe but for gravity.

          • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Hmm, I hadn’t considered an “ultragravity catastrophe”. I wonder if this could accout for dark energy or the supposed inflatons? Probably not, the catastrophe suggests infinite energy, not just lots of energy, eh?

            The ultraviolet catastrophe was averted due to the discreet nature of electrons though, and I don’t recall gravity behaving as a blackbody radiator anyway. Would this come into effect at horizons?

            • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Sorry, I think I came off as too confident in my previous comment. I’m quite sure about my first paragraph but the rest is just speculation from an amateur.

              If I would risk speculating even further though, there’s some similarity in the sense that infinities indicate a problem. In the ultraviolet catastrophe the infinity arises from the energy of arbitrarily short EM wavelengths. With gravity it arises in the density of black holes. It seems unreasonable that it would actually be infinite, and it’s possible that quantization of gravity plays a part in preventing that from happening.