Questions tagged [general-relativity]
Questions about relativistic theory of gravity. General relativity describes gravity as a geometrical property of space and time.
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Maximum spin rate of a black hole?
I have just been watching a podcast called "Deep Astronomy" and the discussion was about a super fast spinning black hole discovered with the NuSTAR space observatory. This black hole was ...
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What produces gravitational waves with "periods between about 100 - 8000 seconds"?
The Ulysses mission has a compelling story. It was sent to Jupiter to perform a gravitational assist shooting it out of the plane of the ecliptic in order to fly over the Sun's north and south poles ...
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Have more recent LIGO/VIRGO gravitational wave measurements narrowed down the speed of gravity further?
This answer to How precise are the observational measurements for the speed of gravity? says:
...in 2013 a Chinese group built a model using Earth's tides that helped them narrow it down.
... [T]he ...
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If light has no mass, why is it affected by gravity?
Light doesn’t accelerate in a gravitational field, which things with mass would do, because light has a universally constant velocity. Why is that exception?
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Age of the universe and time dilation
Given our knowledge and the standard cosmological model, we estimate that the age of the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.
How much sense does it make to talk about the age of the universe as ...
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What is our universe expanding into?
From inflation theory and other theories explaining the birth of the universe, the universe is expanding and recently it's been discovered that the expansion has been accelerating. My question is ...
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Is it "nonsense to even talk about" objects outside the observable universe not having gravitational influence on us? (finite speed of gravity)
In this supplemental answer to Is the zero gravity experienced in ISS the “artificial” kind? in Space Exploration SE I said:
Gravity moves at the speed of light so nothing outside out observable ...
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Are wormholes even possible?
While this question could fall under Space Exploration or Physics (I don't have the "best" reputation on THAT forum), I feel that it is very much related to how the universe itself functions, ...
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What can be learned from, or noted in this LIGO Orrery video?
The Ars Technica article Physicists detected gravitational waves from four new black-hole mergers notes that
This brings the total number of events detected by LIGO and Virgo to 11.
It also has a ...
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Problem with the Orbital Precession predicted by the Relativistic Acceleration equation used in the JPL D440-D441 Ephemerides - please advise
I have previously encountered a problem with the equation used by Yeomans and others for determining the gravitational acceleration of comets (see update in my answer to the previous question Can ...
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Spacetime curvature illustration accuracy
When a particle travels through spacetime, this is sometimes illustrated moving in flat grid with various depths. How accurate is this way of imagining gravity?
Can the gravity well be infinitely ...
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Latest cosmological parameters
I'm looking for the latest values (with uncertainties) of the four main cosmological density parameters $\Omega_i$ :
\begin{align}\tag{1}
\Omega_{\text{mat}} &={} ?,
&\Omega_{\text{rad}} &=...
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Can General Relativity indicate phase-dependent variations in planetary orbital acceleration?
In a previous question about differences in Newtonian and GTR gravitional force for the case of star-planet gravitational interactions an approximate relationship was noted between the expressions for ...
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Can Newton's gravity equation explain why black holes are so strong?
I was just wondering why black hole's gravitational forces are so powerful. I know it's usually explained by Einstein's relativity which states that when an object becomes infinitely dense (a compact ...
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Gravitational lensing in Newtonian physics
Famously, when Eddington attempted to measure gravitational lensing during the Eclipse, it was the measured magnitude of the lensing that gave gravity [pun, obviously, intended] to General Relativity -...
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Is there a better explanation of Hawking radiation?
I'm writing a piece on Hawking radiation, and find I have something of a problem. The "given" explanation which I find on Wikipedia and elsewhere is unsatisfactory:
"Physical insight into the ...
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Where did this famous Planetary Precession Formula come from?
The following equation (which I shall term the Planetary Precession Formula, PPF for short) famously appeared in a 1915 publication by Einstein where he indicated how it could be derived from his ...
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How could a neutron star collapse into a black hole?
White dwarfs usually do not collapse, as they have electron degeneracy pressure due to the Pauli exclusion principle. However, if one accretes mass beyond the Chandrasekhar limit, it is energetically ...
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Is Webb or any near-future telescopes like ELT capable of observing redshift changes to confirm General Relativity?
The (Davis and Lineweaver (2003)) "Expanding Confusion" paper states that "the expected change in redshift due to cosmological acceleration or deceleration is only ∆z ∼ 10^(−8) over 100 ...
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What it would look like to observe people with a different time flows?
As I learned, that the bigger gravity source you are influenced by the more slow time ticks for you, the farther away you are from a gravity source the faster times ticks.
So Imagine two different ...
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Has GAIA learned anything about General Relativity looking near Jupiter? (Gerry Gilmore: "oblate rotating mass moving in a deeper (Solar) potential")
From Gerry Gilmore (2018) Gaia: 3-dimensional census of the Milky Way Galaxy
4.4 Fundamental physics
Relativistic effects are highly significant for Gaia measurement accuracy, with
tests of General ...
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How did the Hulse-Taylor Pulsar Provide Confirming Evidence of General Relativity?
What measurements and observations of the Hulse-Taylor Pulsar agreed precisely with the predictions of general relativity, and how did these measurements support the theory?
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How far should the source be, for the gravitation waves to be visible on Earth?
If I understand it well enough, gravitational waves cause ripples in the space-time fabric. To our eyes, that would look like those rippling-effects on amateur videos.
Where does a source have to be,...
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Relativistic Mercury orbit around the Sun
My question is the following,would the scalar of precession of Mercury orbit be the same if Mercury orbited Sun in the oposit direction?
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How much time passes in the outside universe when falling into a black hole?
If someone were to jump into a black hole, looking back at Earth, how far into the future would they see of Earth? As I understand it, time would dilate approaching infinity as you approach the event ...
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Gravitational field released during supernovae
During the collapse of a star at the commencement of supernovae, the intense pressures force fusion and fission to create the heavier elements and release vast amounts of energy. As this energy/mass ...
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Is a black hole a 5 dimensional vortex?
We know that a black hole behaves like a whirlpool or a tornado or any of the other rotating phenomena we experience on Earth.But the thing is, all these phenomena, except the black hole, are 2-...
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How was the Messenger spacecraft used to measure Mercury's orbital precession to such accuracy? Could this have been done using radar?
This comment under an answer to Path of Mercury and general relativity mentions that the Messenger spacecraft was used to measure the precession of Mercury's orbit to such accuracy that the tiny ...
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Was the Sun's gravitational lensing observed in other solar eclipses than the one in 1919?
In 1919 the gravitational lensing by the Sun has been observed during a total solar eclipse. Did someone observe the lensing in any other total eclipses? Last year there was a total eclipse in Chile ...
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Are astronomers researching or trying to find signs of worm holes?
In many movies and in the popular culture wormholes are often referenced, as well as "faster than light travel", which seems almost to be the same thing, is possible.
Are astronomers seriously ...
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Is there anything different about the gravitation around a non-spinning black hole and a neutron star of the same mass?
If we perform a simple experiment by orbiting identical spacecraft around a non-rotating black hole and a non-rotating neutron star of equal mass at a "safe" distance, and ignore differences ...
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Recommendation for introductory cosmology text
I am looking for recommendations for an introductory text (or texts) on cosmology on the advanced undergrad or beginning grad level. I am coming from primarily a physics undergrad background (doing ...
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Does gravity slow or speed light up?
The speed of light in a vacuum is presumably the fastest speed possible.
if gravity bends the course of light, does this imply that gravity the retards light so it is moving at a slower speed? If ...
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Can A Black Hole Exist?
In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and other concluded that a certain neutron stars could collapse to black holes and no known law of physics would intervene. As far as I can tell, there is no observational ...
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What can we expect from the first accurate image of a black hole?
From recent news from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy:
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 14 Million Euros to a
team of European astrophysicists to construct the first ...
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Are there sufficient observational data to measure non-Newtonian perihelion advances of any Asteroid and Comet orbits?
Anomalous (i.e. not predicted from Newtonian theory) advances of the perihelion direction have been observed for many solar system planet orbits and have been accounted for by Einstein's General ...
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Light or neutrinos graze or pass through the Sun and arrive at Earth - need an expression for Sun's gravitational effect on observation direction/time
Skyfield's Github has discussion Jupiter hiccup #815 which then links back to to Non-physical gravitational deflection corrections for Solar System bodies #734.
The script and plot from #815 are shown ...
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Time dilation on an object circling earth
How would a receiver on Earth hear a radio transmission from an object circling earth at 99% of the speed of light for 24 hours. The transmission from the object circulating would be non-stop.
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Does a merging massive binary black hole ‘emits’ more than one gravitational wave?
If we want to use gravitational waves (GW) to determine the Hubble constant, we need to find the source in the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). However, we need to be lucky to ‘see’ it simultaneously ...
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Can you create a black hole using kinetic energy?
Imagine you have a particle accelerator that you can crank up to arbitrarily high energies. Because of General Relativity, the particles get heavier and heavier as you dump more energy into them. ...
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Strong force and metric expansion
If the expansion of the universe (the metric) continues (and perhaps is accelerating), in a very large but finite time the expansion of the metric will clash with the effects of the strong nuclear ...
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Why does earth not collide with the sun? [duplicate]
Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of ...
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Gravitational-Wave Strain and Power (watt/square metre)
If we detect a gravitational wave with a strain of, for example, $h=10^{-20}$, what is the flux of power carried by this wave, in SI units, $W/m^2$ ?
How can flux of power be calculated for a given ...
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Do gravitational waves produce a surrounding gravity field?
Massless light beams produce a surrounding gravity field. A massive particle will move towards it and at the same time be dragged along in the direction of the beam's velocity.
But what will happen ...
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Does time also pass more slowly for a galaxy that is traveling at relativistic speeds, where the speed difference is due to Hubble expansion?
If time passes more slowly, relative to Earth, for a traveler at relativistic speeds, say at .8c, traveling between stars inside this galaxy, does time also pass more slowly for a distant galaxy that ...
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Can the range of the observable universe be extended through an intermediary?
I understand that the so called observable universe has a limit we cannot see through.
My question is whether we might get information through an intermediate hypothetical actor located halfway to ...
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What you would see in a wormhole?
Science fiction seems to depict the experience of traveling through wormholes (if possible of course) as seeing psychedelic colors or lines of light where stars once were (ie. 2001 or Contact). I ...
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Is TDB monotonic? Does it or any of its derivatives have yearly discontinuities with respect to an atomic clock?
This in-depth answer mentions that
...TDB is updated every year. As technology improves, these subtle updates change the timing of past events.
This makes me wonder...
Does this updating result ...
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How does an absolute horizon form before the apparent horizon?
If I understand it correctly, the apparent horizon is the boundary between where light directed outwards will move outwards, and light directed outwards will move inwards. Even if light is moving away ...
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Is there any significant time dilation on other planets orbiting the sun?
Is there significant time dilation on the other planets orbiting the sun? Would an 'hour' experienced on earth actually be 59 or 61 minutes on other planets, depending on their distance to the sun? ...
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