Re: Speed of Gravity

In TML-nightly [email removed] (Jack Dietz) writes:

>As far as I can remember, current theories call for a charge carrier
>particle for all four forces.  The carriers of electromagnetism (the
>photon), the strong nuclear force (the pion) and the weak nuclear
>force (the intermediate weak boson) have been found.  All have zero
>rest mass and all have a set velocity of c, 2.998x10^8 m/s.

Whoa! Neither the pion (aka pi-meson) nor the intermediate vector
boson (W-particle) have a zero rest meas. Quite the contrary. The
pion is massive and the W is *extremely* massive. In fact, this is
*why* these are "short range" forces.

The range of a force depends on how long the virtual particles that
carry it can last. This is given by a function that relates their
energy to the time they can exist using h (planck's constant). The
higher the energy, the shorter the time.

Since photons and gravitons have a rest mass of 0, they don't have to
"waste" any of their energy on mass. But the W and the pion *do*.
This sets an upper limit on the time they can exist, even with *zero*
energy devoted to carrying the force. That time gives the maximum
range they can reach.

Leonard Erickson            [email removed]
CIS: [70465,203]           [email removed]
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