Talk:Quantum gravity/Archive for 2011

Advance of the perihelion of Mercury
In the intro, the article states: "(Planets' gravitational fields, as of 2009, are well-described by linearized gravity; so strong-field effects—any effects of gravity beyond lowest nonvanishing order in φ/c2—have not been observed even in the gravitational fields of planets and main sequence stars)."

But the classic tests of GR are all about the first order correction to Newtonian gravity. So the effects of gravity to lowest nonvanishing order in φ/c2 would be the Newtonian prediction, then the advance of the perihelion of Mercury or the bending of light around the sun come from the first order correction to the Newtonian prediction due to GR. So the article should read something like "strong-field effects-any effects of general relativity beyond the lowest order correction to Newtonian gravity". 128.189.173.59 (talk) 22:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I do agree!James W (talk) 02:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This is OK. But the general and more serious problem with this Wikipedia article is that it deals with a difficult subject, which requires a clear exposition, and the text under "overview" is unintelligible even to someone who has some prior knowledge of the subject! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.9.91.194 (talk) 19:55, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The diagram in overview may need a little refining. The development of quantum mechanics, classical electrodynamics (Maxwell) and special relativity is generally known as Quantum Electron Dynamics (QED). It is an example of a successful quantum field theory which incorporates the precursor theories into its structure and yields their results in the appropriate limits. At the Quantum Gravity end of there are several competing theories which show promise but are not established experimentally or even at the level of self consistency. The term Quantum Field Theory encompasses both QED and grand Unified Theories. The general classification for the various Quantum Gravity theories might be as Grand Unified Theories (GUT) within a general classification of Quantum Field Theory. Agree with Sinebot that the text is a bit unintelligible, but it is a starting point to work from and refine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DaveC49 (talk • contribs) 23:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

On Small-Scale Gravity
BEFORE YOU READ ON, CONSIDER THAT INSTEAD OF STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE, THINK OF IT MORE AS GRAVITY ACTING UPON THE QUARKS/COMPONENTS OF THE ATOM, NEWTONS THEORY OF GRAVITY TELLS US THAT THE FARTHER AWAY OBJECTS ARE IN SPACE, THE WEAKER THE EFFECT ON SAID OBJECTS GRAVITY HAS, GRAVITY BEING RELATIVE TO DISTANCE HERE, THINK OF HOW STRONG IT MUST BE WITHIN THE ATOM? THIS IDEA OF MINE ISN'T BASED ON ANY MATHS OR EXTENSIVE RESEARCH, I JUST THINK PEOPLE SHOULD THINK ABOUT THE PROBLEMS FACING PHYSISTS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENTLY? HOWEVER, IF I AM WRONG, FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME AND EDUCATE ME FURTHER, I HAVE A KEEN INTEREST IN THEORETICAL, EXPERIMENTAL, QUANTUM AND ASTRO PHYSICS, CHEERS, MICHAEL. mike-12-6-94@hotmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.42.65 (talk) 03:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Does anyone have the means to compute G*m1*m2/r^2 on this? Niluop (talk) 03:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

This article is not encyclopedic in nature
I always thought that primary sources were to be avoided in an encyclopedia article. This includes even peer-reviewed published physics papers since the peer-review process is notoriously lax...all kinds of trash gets accepted. It must apply even more to self-archived articles at the Los Alamos archive. A writer of an encyclopedia article ought to be able to support everything with a secondary source, i.e. a textbook or a review book or something like that. I think perhaps a review article by a well-known authority could be acceptable, too, provided one checked on what the critical comments about it were.64.121.25.82 (talk) 04:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)