Why am I not buying the story of the gravitational wave discovery?

Professor Zhixun Huang (黄志洵), Beijing

Since the beginning of the 20^th century, all the way until now, the scientific knowledge and experiences of humankind have been increasing exponentially; yet in some scientific fields research work is making essentially no progress. The searches of gravitational waves and gravitons are apparently such examples, and just a few years ago some European and American physicists had even complained that “this would constitute an almost impossible task”. However, on February 11, 2016 the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States announced the detection of the so-called gravitational waves, and the news quickly spread to every corner of the world. It is recalled that in the year of 1887 H. Hertz discovered, by means of experimental methods, electromagnetic waves which had been predicted by Maxwell, and for the next 130 years since then, this discovery has tremendously impacted human life. Hence it is reasoned that, should gravitational waves exist, its discovery would be a major scientific event. On the other hand, the Chinese physicist Li Miao (李淼) believes that the recent announced LIGOs discovery is only the beginning of human endeavor to search and study gravitational waves, and this is because multiple wave sources could exist and the source in their current focus is only one of them, and that this source lies so far away that it is even beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. I interpret what Dr. Li said as: Whether the existence of gravitational waves as a general physical law like that of electromagnetic waves is still a question to be explored and answered.

On the November of 1915, A. Einstein presented a series of four papers to the Prussian Academy, and thus he established a new theory called general relativity (GR), which was fundamentally different from his theory of special relativity (SR) proposed in 1905. In GR space and time are unified into one and the same entity called spacetime, and matter distribution determines the curvature of spacetime. Hence it is believed that, just as an accelerated electric charge source will generate an electromagnetic wave, the acceleration of matter would create the so-called gravitational wave, and such a wave is supposed to be the propagation of the so-called changing spacetime curvature. On the January of 1918, Einstein published his paper titled “Über Gravitationswellen" (On Gravitational Waves), where it was proposed that gravitational waves are transverse waves and they propagate with the speed of light.

In recent years I have reiterated that there is no such thing as gravitational waves. Why is it so? I have consistently objected to the behavior of some Chinese scientists in misleading the government to appropriate huge sum of money into these “gigantic projects”, and especially against the way they blindly follow their western counterparts, and I strongly favor the establishment of the fundamental and foundational sciences with Chinese characteristics. What’s more, I have cited many and widespread evidences to demonstrate that, the number of creative scientific results is not necessarily proportional to the amount of money that is put into related science projects, and such counterexamples are widely seen. It is for this and other reasons that I do not support the search of dark matter, dark energy, and gravitational waves. Some time ago, China sent a satellite into orbit to detect dark matter; yet a leading scientist responsible for the project claimed that no one can guarantee the existence of such dark matter. Regarding to scientific programs worthy of billions of dollars, such a saying is not only very arbitrary but also repugnant. …… And to make things worse, projects even in tens of billions are now in preparation or in progress. The development of foundational sciences does indeed reuire the government to put money into them, and there is nothing wrong about this; yet as to the question of how to properly or wisely spend this money, scientists in both China and abroad should exercise judgement and discretion. As for Chinese scientists, it is especially important that we walk our own way in making our country scientifically thriving and strong, and it is apparently not appropriate to decorate our country’s future with what Western scientists had created in their past.

Coming to the particular question of gravitational waves detection, I don’t think it is the right thing for the Chinese physicists to do to simply act as the pupils of Western scientists. Let us begin with a simple analysis of this subject based on fundamental physics, and it is a well-established fact that the classical mechanics (CM) founded by Newton has clearly formulated the definitions of such fundamental concepts as space, time, and gravity. The SR proposed by Einstein in 1905 does not include the consideration of gravity, and Minkowski said in 1908 that “from now on, both the concepts of space and time will disappear, and what only remains is the unification of the two concepts into a single entity”—here he was of course referring to the concept of spacetime. This concept of spacetime quickly made its presence into the GR published in 1916, which in turn was developed into a theory of gravitational waves—i.e., a theory in which matter causes curvature in spacetime, and that when an object is accelerated, it radiates out ripples in the form of curved spacetime called gravitational waves, which travel at the speed of light. And it is further believed that the larger the mass of the object, the greater the amplitude of its gravitational wave.

Yet nowhere in any specialized books or literature on metrology can we find an independent physical quantity called spacetime. In physics, the dimension for time is s (second), and the dimension for space is m³ (meter cubed), so that the dimension for spacetime is expected to be s*m³ (or m³*s), yet this expression neither represents an independent physical concept nor does it have an inherent and unambiguous physical meaning or content. Metrology is built on the measurability of a physical quantity, yet s*m³ (or m³*s) clearly does not satisfy this condition, hence what the concept of spacetime tries to convey is not clear at all, and therefore scientifically meaningless. Therefore it is just natural that literature on metrology does not deal with this concept of spacetime, and Minkowski’s above quoted saying is unjustifiable. The unification of space and time is the theoretical foundation of GR, yet this foundation is very questionable.

Next, certain statements in relativistic mechanics are not acceptable to me at all. Firstly, GR does not regard gravity as a force and only uses geometric terms to describe it. Further, there is no gravity under flat spacetime without curvature, and only when spacetime is curved does gravity exist. Yet, as for the question of what in essence gravity is in relativistic mechanics, GR never answers it in an affirmative way; nor can a formula be found in relativistic mechanics so as to calculate the magnitude of gravity, and how can this situation be acceptable?! I believe spacetime is only a concept adopted for the purpose of making physical analysis, and in no way it represents the physical reality. Given these facts, I certainly do not accept the existence of the so-called gravitational waves.

Then, there is the question of the propagation speed of the so-called gravitational waves, and travelling at light speed c seems to suggest that they belong to the electromagnetic spectrum family, yet nothing is more absurd than this! Gravitational theory has been developed independent of, and parallel to, electromagnetic theory, and the former can certainly borrow ideas and methods from the latter, but how can it be that the so-called gravitational wave is simply assigned the speed c of electromagnetic waves without any reason? Within the particle family of the Standard Model, elementary particles are classified into three basic types: hadrons, leptons, and propagators; and within the category of propagators, there are bosons which act as the carrier for weak nuclear force, gluons as the carrier for strong nuclear force, and photons as the carrier for electromagnetic force. According to GR, the carrier for gravity force (actually there is no such force as gravity in GR) is graviton, yet search of graviton in a period of many years has failed to find its trace at all. But this is only one of many difficulties faced by this theory, and for other examples: If gravitational waves do exist and travel at the speed of light, then gravitons would also travel at the speed of light, i.e., the same as photons, which conclusion is not just far-fetched but even ridiculous. In fact, many researchers have pointed out that the propagation speed of gravity is far exceeding the speed of light (but not infinity, though), and what is being referred to here by the term of “gravity” is apparently not what is normally called “gravitational wave” either. It can be inferred that the existence of gravitational waves, just as that of gravitons, is very dubious, and at least it needs to be further studied; but what obviously is not needed is propaganda and brainwash.

Lastly, we have noticed that the way for the LIGOs in the United States to find the so-called gravitational waves is to “receive a signal”—two detectors with a separation of around 3000 km both received the same signal, or waveform, but with a time difference of 7.1 ms, which seems not to be a reliable and trustworthy way of making a scientific discovery, and this is because you cannot be absolutely certain that the waveform is indeed caused by gravitational waves. The time for the receipt of this signal is 23:50 on September 14, 2014, and although the signal-to-noise ratio was relatively high, there is still a possibility that it was caused by other factors, for example, slight terrestrial quake or vibrating motions between the two detectors. It is well known that, when collecting scientific evidences or reading data, scientists sometimes tend to regard, whether intentionally or unintentionally, what is unknown as what they are searching for. At least it can be asserted that, the current discovery regarding gravitational waves, is still some distance away from the assurance that had been brought about by what Hertz discovered by his electromagnetic experiments in 1887, and it certainly needs further work to determine whether what the LIGOs have found is a scientific truth or it is just a disturbance or distraction.

February 15, 2016, by Huang Zhixun (The author of this note is a professor and Ph. D supervisor at the Communication University of China in Beijing; the English translation of this short article is done by acarefreeman and approved by professor Huang Zhixun himself)