Perhaps this may help...
Einstein’s GR (General Relativity) predicted that if a jolt, somehow, was given to the fabric of space (i.e. spacetime) then powerful waves would propagate from such an event. [ He first thought this wouldn't be the case, but he seems to have changed his mind.] A simple analogy would be when we throw rocks into water and watch waves form and move outward in rings.
GR says that mass will affect the shape of spacetime, and spacetime will affect the direction mass will travel. So if a sudden shift in mass (e.g. collision of two colossal masses) will generate a shift of spacetime in such a dramatic way that massive waves will necessarily emanate from that event, similar to water waves that come from a rock making a splash. [I preferred a cannon ball off the diving board for wave generation over, say, the “can opener”. The later did provide more splash, however.
]
These gravity waves are, nevertheless, very hard to measure since these “splashes” don’t happen nearby, thankfully. But LIGO and others have measured a few of them, verifying GR, once again. The wave from a billion lightyears, for instance, alters spacetime here by only a fraction of the width of a proton.
Also, the wave itself diminishes in a linear way and not by the inverse square law, so that helps in finding them.
But even small events such as asteroid impacts, planets passing close to one another, etc, will create lesser waves. These would be like tiny ripples on an ocean when a tiny gust of wind suddenly blows down on the water, but these waves don’t combine into something significant. Surfers know that big waves come from wind blowing over the surface over hundreds of miles that continually reinforce a little wave into it becoming a big wave. I’ve never seen any of them square, though I loved to surf.
So like water waves, the millions of waves crossing one another don’t create havoc for ships as only large ones crossing over one another will make peaks combine into something more than expected, but only very briefly. Waves from millions, or billions, of lightyears away from one another aren’t going to combine into anything unusual.
Gravity should not be considered an electromagnetic phenomena. It is one of the big 4 forces, though the weakest of them – strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force and gravity. It doesn’t emit photons (EM). [It may emit gravitons (per one or more theories about gravity).]
Einstein’s work to seek the combination of all the forces was never about saying they were the same or equivalent (IIRC). Only a super extreme circumstance would combine them, which would likely took place in the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang.
Einstein did argue against the aether by explaining the null result from the Michelson-Morley experiment by claiming its existence was superfluous – light propagated through space without the need for an aether. He wasn’t saying there was no aether only that it was unnecessary to give it much consideration since it has no apparent effects.
Einstein’s GR (General Relativity) predicted that if a jolt, somehow, was given to the fabric of space (i.e. spacetime) then powerful waves would propagate from such an event. [ He first thought this wouldn't be the case, but he seems to have changed his mind.] A simple analogy would be when we throw rocks into water and watch waves form and move outward in rings.
GR says that mass will affect the shape of spacetime, and spacetime will affect the direction mass will travel. So if a sudden shift in mass (e.g. collision of two colossal masses) will generate a shift of spacetime in such a dramatic way that massive waves will necessarily emanate from that event, similar to water waves that come from a rock making a splash. [I preferred a cannon ball off the diving board for wave generation over, say, the “can opener”. The later did provide more splash, however.
]These gravity waves are, nevertheless, very hard to measure since these “splashes” don’t happen nearby, thankfully. But LIGO and others have measured a few of them, verifying GR, once again. The wave from a billion lightyears, for instance, alters spacetime here by only a fraction of the width of a proton.
Also, the wave itself diminishes in a linear way and not by the inverse square law, so that helps in finding them.
But even small events such as asteroid impacts, planets passing close to one another, etc, will create lesser waves. These would be like tiny ripples on an ocean when a tiny gust of wind suddenly blows down on the water, but these waves don’t combine into something significant. Surfers know that big waves come from wind blowing over the surface over hundreds of miles that continually reinforce a little wave into it becoming a big wave. I’ve never seen any of them square, though I loved to surf.
So like water waves, the millions of waves crossing one another don’t create havoc for ships as only large ones crossing over one another will make peaks combine into something more than expected, but only very briefly. Waves from millions, or billions, of lightyears away from one another aren’t going to combine into anything unusual.
Gravity should not be considered an electromagnetic phenomena. It is one of the big 4 forces, though the weakest of them – strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force and gravity. It doesn’t emit photons (EM). [It may emit gravitons (per one or more theories about gravity).]
Einstein’s work to seek the combination of all the forces was never about saying they were the same or equivalent (IIRC). Only a super extreme circumstance would combine them, which would likely took place in the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang.
Einstein did argue against the aether by explaining the null result from the Michelson-Morley experiment by claiming its existence was superfluous – light propagated through space without the need for an aether. He wasn’t saying there was no aether only that it was unnecessary to give it much consideration since it has no apparent effects.
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