Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein Right

Re:Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein R... by guscost on Thursday February 11, 2016 @05:24PM (#11083797)

> A graviton wouldn't be able to escape a black hole ... the curvature of the spacetime around the black hole

But isn't the curvature of spacetime around the black hole supposed to be the effect of its interaction with the graviton??

Is this where the translation from GR -> QM breaks down?

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Re:Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein R... by yk on Thursday February 11, 2016 @05:54PM (#11083981)

> Is this where the translation from GR -> QM breaks down?

Sort of, to get a graviton you introduce perturbations on a background metric. (Basically small wiggles of spacetime around an 'average.') You don't do anything like that when you solve the Einstein equations. Consequently, the background spacetime ( that is, the black hole) is not really made of gravitons. (At least in some sense.)

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Re:Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein R... by guscost on Thursday February 11, 2016 @06:24PM (#11084140)

So in GR the metric itself is warping, which is a problem if you need a background reference/stable metric to define your graviton field? Is that close? Anyway thanks.

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Re:Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein R... by yk on Thursday February 11, 2016 @07:03PM (#11084367)

Yes, pretty close.

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