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It’s been confirmed before by using a poor test involving Mercury years ago. Not sure why the article didnt mention that.
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SEATTLE (AP) — Einstein was right. The speed of gravity matches the speed of light, according to astronomers who took advantage of a rare planetary alignment to measure one of the fundamental forces of nature.Edward B. Fomalout of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri measured the amount that light from a distant star was deflected by the gravity of Jupiter as the planet passed in front of the star.
Albert Einstein, who formulated basic theories about space, time and relativity, had assumed that gravity moved with the speed of light, about 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second, “but until now, no one had measured it,” said Kopeikin.
“Einstein was right, of course,” said Fomalout.
The measurement is one of the last fundamental constants in physics to be established and Fomalout admitted, “gravity is not well understood.”
The researchers used 10 radio telescopes scattered across the Earth from Hawaii to Germany to precisely measure how light from a distant quasar, a type of star, was bent as it passed by Jupiter on its way to the Earth. Jupiter is in the precise position for such a measurement only once a decade.
To make the measurement, the instruments had to detect a minute deflection of the light. Fomalout compared the required precision to being able to measure the size of a silver dollar sitting on the moon’s surface, or measuring the width of a human hair from 250 miles (400 kilometers) away.
Craig Hogan, a University of Washington astronomer, said the achievement “is an important advance for physics,” but he predicted that new techniques will be developed that will measure gravity’s speed even more accurately.
“You can expect a series of experiments now,” he said.
Fomalout and Kopeikin said their results are accurate within about 20 percent.
Knowing the precise speed of gravity is important to physicists testing such modern ideas as the superstring, which holds that fundamental particles in the universe are made up of small vibrating loops or strings. It also affects some basic space-time theories.
One thing that Einstein was wrong about was the speed of light, researchers have shown that light does not in fact travel at a constant speed, so the original idea of it travelling at it’s estimated speed is incorrect, so with that in mind they could not have mapped the speed of gravity, as no one can know what the true speed of light actually is.
The idea is, is that if you peer back far enough see the origins of the big bang, at this point light travelled much faster, and as the universe expanded it became slower, but from our point of view light travels to us at a constant speed, but that is only from our vantage point on Earth, and we caculated it fronm the Earth, so light is not a constant in other parts of the universe, so in essence they have only mapped the speed of gravity on how we perceive the speed of light…it is by no means a universal constant.
ADMOne other thing is that light is pulled along by gravity and can be bent or sucked in by heavy gravitational bodies, therefore the force of gravity is much more powerful than light, which would lead me too believe that gravity must have an immeasurable speed, for instance a black hole must have a faster gravitational speed than light, otherwise light would not be sucked in and would continue as a constant, but basically the pull of a black hole has to be faster than light.
So from what I know of physics it simply is not possible to gauge gravity’s speed.
Imagine the universe like a big road that goes forever outward, light is being pulled along by the gravity that is expanding with the universe, so in essence it is gravity that is giving light emissions their speed, gravity can vary at different points in the universe and light can do nothing but react to whatever gravity dictates, giving light different velocities.
The same principle applies to warp theories, use gravity too beat light and you attain warp speed, i.e make a ship defy gravity and you defy light, then once done move the ship at a faster than light velocity, which is made easier because gravity in no longer an issue to be dealt with, don’t do it and you will be crushed by gravity.
ADM
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