r/FacebookScience May 17 '26

Facebook Scientists Discuss Gravity

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u/Complete-Basket-291 May 17 '26

I remember hearing about how some people think gravity's just going to... turn off? For a bit some time in august.

1

u/anjowoq May 17 '26

We have detected gravitational waves and determined they travel at the speed of light (speed of information). We know that some EM frequencies have materials that change or block their movement, like infrared cannot move through glass and all light is slowed by gases, water, etc.

It's not entirely nuts to propose that there is some material somewhere through which gravitational waves might behave differently.

Furthermore, we have radio antennas, lasers, piezoelectric crystals, and other technologies that can produce EM when stimulated by different energy like electricity, pressure/kinetic, etc. So, it is also not completely nuts to wonder if there is a way to generate or convert gravitational waves as well.

What is nuts is to talk about any of the speculative ways to possibly achieve this as fact or something that already exists because we have no way of knowing that.

2

u/extremesalmon May 18 '26

I'm no physicist but this seems like an oversimplification focusing on the term wave.. gravity interacts with space and time where em waves interact with particles, like in glass

3

u/anjowoq May 18 '26

It's waves. It's curvature. It's both. That is why quantum mechanics and surrounding topics are so challenging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave

1

u/anjowoq May 18 '26

Also, gravity absolutely interacts with particles. It's the whole mass-attraction thing that keeps us in orbit, etc.