Are there gravity waves?

Question

If gravity is dependant on the presence of two masses and the distance between them, and at the atomic scale mass is constantly moving, won't the gravity resulting from two masses be constantly changing?

Answer 1

There have been indirect detections of gravitational radiation. Two people won the Nobel prize around 1993ish for measuring the decay in the orbit of a binary pulsar as being consistent with the predicted energy loss via gravitational radiation.

The only gravitational wave observatory I know of (LIGO) is only sensitive to rather unusual events, such as the final seconds of a neutron-neutron star merger within our own galaxy or Andromeda


LISA an orbital interferometer with a much larger baseline. It will be the first reasonable shot at direct detection of gravitational waves. (This assumes NASA survives the machinations of the current administration to kill it.)

Your assertion that "at the atomic scale mass is constantly moving" is fallacious. At quantum scales motion is not well defined. Wavicles (particles) exist at no precise location, but that is not the same thing as constantly moving around some central spot.

Finally, even if this were the case, there is currently no adequate description of gravity at quantum scales. A theory of quantum gravity is one of the holy grails of modern physics, and it is hoped that a theory that unifies gravity with the other forces (strong, electroweak) will produce a quantum gravity theory.

Answer 2

As best I understand gravity waves, they are produced when ever a mass moves through space.... the big problem is detecting them... an instrument build to measure them would itself have a mass and would be moving through space, there lies the problem in detecting them. There would have to be an enormous mass moving at an enormous speed very near the detector to produce a reading.

Answer 3

There is an experiment being built to detect gravity waves for the first time. It's called LIGO, you can Google it to find out more info. As far as I know, they haven't yet detected the gravity waves.

You might also look at
http://sciencebulletins.amnh.org/astro/f/gravity.20041101/

Hope this helps.