Cutecity [he/him]

I was definitely talking about the first scenario, as is mostly everyone else. I know not everyone admits gravity (gravitational attraction) might travel faster than light as in the “sun moving” thought experiment. I’m not confused, I’m discussing like everybody else. You linked an article about gravitational waves which must transmit through some sort of gravitational field and they might transmit at approximately c as predicted in general relativity. What I believe is that gravitational attraction, so the general effect of the field will be felt as if it acts almost instantly, and that does not contradict anything about the waves in that field. Because the waves in that field are not responsible for the attraction. This is similar to how photons do not mediate the magnetic attraction in magnets even though they are electromagnetic waves. The current theories (which you are pulling from) manage to mathematically explain that in our moving sun thought experiment, the gravitational force coming from the sun appears to “update” instantly as if it’s acting from it’s actual position without the lag, because of (to my understanding) the curvature of space-time. So I personally can’t fight that on mathematical grounds because that’s above my understanding. But in the end it doesn’t change much of anything to our discussion, because the force of gravity still updates “as if” it was mostly instantaneous and that’s the standard model. Meanwhile, gravitational waves do travel at c but are kind of unrelated to the continous force. They are merely fluctuations in that force. Please keep poking and challenging me at that, I’m still wrapping my head around it and will need better and better sources while I’m hyper focusing on it until I move on lol

I don’t think gravitational waves traveling at the speed of light is the same as the gravitational attraction being apparently felt faster than light travels. Similarly, electric attraction between + and - charges is different from electromagnetic waves being transmitted in the field. It’s not light that is “communicating” that attraction.

I used wave function as a bad form of shorthand for the general properties of the photon, such as the theoretically infinitely extending magnetic and electric fields. Those associated fields stop existing when the photon is absorbed onto a screen. They collapse faster than light can travel. This doesn’t ruin much of modern theories, because there doesn’t seem to be a way to transfer usable information through this phenomenon.

No, gravity is faster than light. If there was this lag, we wouldn’t have stable orbits exactly because of the lag you describe. Wave functions of photons also collapse faster than light when they hit absorbent material.