> That would indeed be like a giant atom, so we would have to have a quantum > theory of gravity to know if that would work, and we don't have such a > theory. Quantum theory tells us those orbiting changes could not be in just > any old orbit but can only be in discrete quantized orbits, and the energy > radiated away would not be continuous but would come out in chunks . > Maxwell's equations are only approximately correct.
That’s true, but I’m not sure how significant quantum effects (or quantum gravity effects) would be on such a large scale. > I don't think that would work, if it did then if you hung a spring vertically > from a hook in a gravitational field and gave it a small oscillation the > spring's oscillation would get larger and larger until it tore itself apart. > But that's not what we observe. Well, in a gravitational field like Earth’s the force pulling down on the spring is constant (it’s the weight of the spring itself and whatever is attached to it, which doesn’t vary significantly with height over the distances we observe). With a constant rather than an oscillating force, you won’t get amplification of oscillations. Dark energy curves space in a different manner than the presence of an ordinary mass like a planet, so the situations aren’t exactly analogous. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
