10101001 10101001's Journal: Curvation of Space/Time

If you're interested in forces and space/time, you might have found some interest in the way certain particles have been dubbed force-carriers. Some believe that the those forces we all known and love (gravity, electro-magnetic, weak, and strong) are conveyed by particles in a process only weekly understood by most (me included). One of the interesting parts of this comes into play when one considers that photons are considered the force carrier of electro-magnetism.

Why this is interesting should become apparently as one considers gravitational lensing. For those unaware (which I assume are few), gravitational lensing is based upon the idea that space/time is bent/curved as the result of gravity. As a result, a ray of light will "bend" around gravitationally large objects, resulting in various lensing effects. In truth, the light continues on a "straight" path in space, but because the path is bent, the light effectively bends as well.

The reason this should be of interest is because photons don't have mass. On the other hand, W and Z bosons (responsible for the weak force) *do* have mass. Why is this important? Because as force carriers, W and Z bosons themselves warp space/time while photons do not. Mass is, after all, the measure of space/time warpage. Now this leads into a hypothetical, and yet unobserved, particle known as the graviton.

As you might guess from the name, gravitons are the hypothetical force carriers of gravity. Gravitons, like photons, are thought to be massless and travel at the speed of light. However, gravitons aren't exactly like photons because they don't follow the curvature of space/time. How can this be known? Accretion disks.

Accretion disks, if you're not aware, are spinning clouds of gas rotating at high velocity on their path to enter a black hole. Such high velocity actually causes such immense friction that large quantities of the gas's mass (estimates range upwards of 50%) is converted to energy. But what causes such high velocities? Why, the warpage of space/time that's caused by the black hole.

Now, what is one of the fundamental trademarks of a black hole? Why, an event horizon. And an event horizon is defined as a boundary point at which space/time is so curved that not even light can escape. But, it's not so much that light isn't fast enough as it is that, as discussed earlier, light travels along a "straight" path of space/time; but because in a black hole space/time is so curved, space is bent back on itself, preventing any "straight" path to leave the black hole.

Why is this of interest? Because gravitons are supposed to behave nearly identical to light (ie, photons). But, if gravitons were to travel along "straight" paths within a black hole, they themselves would never leave. The result? While objects could still "fall into" a black hole, there would be no gravitons emitted from a black hole to create accretion disks. Ergo, gravitons themselves must not travel along the curvature of space/time.

But what exactly does that mean? How do they travel if not along the straight paths of space/time? Well, the truth is, curved space/time isn't exactly space/time. Instead, a field corresponding to graviton warpage exists. Similarly, a field corresponding to gluon warpage, w and z boson, and photon warpage exists. And while some particles (photons) are effected by the graviton warpage field, others (gravitons, at least) are not.

Meanwhile, the strong force exists, in part, as a graviton warpage field (the sheer fact that one measures the strong force as a mass increase (ie, a gravity increase) attests to that). So, it's not entirely true that mass = energy. For if it did, photons would have mass (ie, graviational warpage). Instead, the measurement of gravitational warpage is merely a good indicator for measuring the energy of many particles.