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Author Topic:   Where does the gravity go?
Rrhain
Member (Idle past 299 days)
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 1 of 49 (188658)
02-26-2005 5:45 AM


I'm not sure if this is appropriate for Big Bang/Cosmology, so I'll let the moderators decide:
Gravity is a property of mass and mass can be converted into energy. When this happens, where does the gravity go? Does it just stop? I'm trying to remember if this is part of the experiments regarding gravitational waves but my physics is fleeing from me and I don't quite know how to express is formally to go look it up.
I'm thinking it does just go away, but I'm wondering if there is a better physicist than I am who would know for certain. Since gravity is so weak, I doubt it could be felt on any sort of common level, but I'm still curious.

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by macaroniandcheese, posted 02-26-2005 12:28 PM Rrhain has not replied
 Message 4 by JonF, posted 02-26-2005 9:06 PM Rrhain has not replied

  
Rrhain
Member (Idle past 299 days)
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 30 of 49 (189402)
03-01-2005 4:33 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by JonF
02-28-2005 10:13 AM


Re: JonF has it right
JonF, that was the concept I think I was trying to wrap my head around: The mass becomes energy (whatever that may mean...it's a convenient description for the conversion of "particles of matter" to "photons" and such) that radiates away, essentially "taking the gravity with it."
I found an article pointing out that the sun is losing 9.13e-14 of its mass per year. As I suspected, this is an incredibly small amount. If I wander through my calculations on the mass of the sun and thus this means it would lose 1% of its mass on the order of 10^11 years. Considering it's only on the order of 10^9 years old and will only last about 10^10 years total, it would seem that the sun is only going to lose about one-tenth of one percent of its mass over its regular lifetime. As I suspected, you'd never notice this with any sort of typical equipment.
Mass has a lot of energy and fusion certainly liberates a lot, but not much of that mass will get converted into energy in the process.

Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by JonF, posted 02-28-2005 10:13 AM JonF has not replied

  
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