Why am I not buying the story of gravitational wave discovery?Huang Zhixun, Beijing

From the beginning of the 20^thcentury up until now, the scientific knowledge and experience of humankind havebeen increasing exponentially, yet in some areas research work is makingessentially no progress. The searches of gravitational waves and gravitons areapparently such examples, and just a few years ago some European and American physicistshad even complained that “this would constitute an almost impossible task”.However, on February 11, 2016 the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United Statesannounced the “detection” of gravitational waves, and the news quickly spreadto the whole world. It is recalled that in the year of 1887 H. Hertzdiscovered, by means of experiments, electromagnetic waves which had been predictedby Maxwell, and for the next 130 years since then, this discovery hastremendously impacted human life. Hence it is reasoned that, shouldgravitational waves exist, its discovery would be a major scientific event. Onthe other hand, the Chinese physicist Li Miao (李淼)believes the recentannounced discovery is only the beginning of human endeavor to search and studygravitational waves, since multiple wave sources could exist and the source incurrent focus is only one of them and that this source lies so far away that itis even beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. I interpret what he says as, whether theexistence of gravitational waves as a general physical law like that of electromagneticwaves is still a question to be searched and answered.

On the November of 1915, A. Einstein presented aseries of four papers to the Prussian Academy, and thus heestablished a new theory called general relativity (GR), which wasfundamentally different from his theory of special relativity (SR) proposed in1905. In GR space and time are unified into one and the same entity calledspacetime, and matter distribution determines the curvature of spacetime. Henceit is believed that, just as an accelerated electric charge source wouldgenerate an electromagnetic wave, the acceleration of matter would create theso-called gravitational wave, and such a wave is actually the propagation of theso-called changing spacetime curvature. On the January of 1918, Einsteinpublished his paper titled “über Gravitationswellen" (On GravitationalWaves), where it was proposed that gravitational waves are transverse waves andthat they propagate with the speed of light.

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In recentyears I have reiterated that there is no such things as gravitational waves.Why is it so? I have consistently objected to the behavior of some Chinesescientists in misleading the government into appropriate huge sum of money ontothese “gigantic projects”, and especially against the manner they blindlyfollow their western counterpart, and I strongly favor the establishment of thefundamental and foundational science subjects 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 tothe amount of money that is put into them, and such counterexamples are widelyseen. It is for this reason that I do not support the search of dark matter,dark energy, and gravitational waves. Some time ago China sent a satellite into orbitto detect dark matter, yet a leading scientist responsible for the projectclaimed that no one can guarantee the existence of such dark matter. Regardingto scientific programs in terms of billions of dollars, such a saying is notonly arbitrary but also repugnant. …… And to make things worse, projectseven in tens of billions are in preparation or progress. The development offundamental sciences does indeed need the government put into money into them,and there is nothing wrong about this; yet as to the question of how toproperly or wisely spend these money, scientists in both China and abroadshould exercise judgement and discretion. As for Chinese scientists, it isespecially important that we walk our own way in making our countryscientifically thriving, and it is apparently not appropriate to decorate ourfuture with what others had created in their past.

Focusing onthe particular project of gravitational waves detection, I don’t think it isthe right thing for us Chinese physicists to do by simply acting as the pupilsof Western scientists. Let us begin with a simple analysis of this subjectbased on fundamental physics, and it is a well-established fact that theclassical mechanics (CM) founded by Newtonhas clearly formulated the definitions of such fundamental concepts as space,time, and gravity. The SR proposed by Einstein in 1905 does not include theconsideration of gravity, and Minkowski said in 1908 that “from now on, boththe concepts of space and time will disappear, and what only remains is thecombination of the two as a single entity”—here he was refering to the conceptof spacetime. This concept of spacetime immediately made its presence into the GRpublished in 1916, which was then developed into a theory of gravitationalwaves—i.e., matter causes curvature in spacetime, and when an object isaccelerated, it radiates out ripples in the form of curved spacetime which is inturn called gravitational wave and which travels at the speed of light, and itis further believed that the larger the mass of the object, the greater theamplitude of its gravitational wave.

Yet nowherein any specialized books or literature on metrology can we find an independentphysical quantity called spacetime (or timespace). In physics, the dimensionfor time is s (second), and the dimension for space is m³ where mrepresents meter, so the dimension for spacetime is expected to be sm³or m³s, yet this expression represents neither an independentphysical concept nor does it have an inherent and unambiguous physical meaningor content. Metrology is built on the measurablility of a physical quantity orconcept, yet sm³ or m³s clearly does not satisfy thiscondition, hence what the concept of spacetime tries to convey is not clear atall, and therefore scientifically meaningless. Therefore it is just naturalthat literature on metrology does not deal with this concept of spacetime, andMinkowski’s above saying is unjustifiable. The unification of space and time isthe theoretical foundation of GR, yet this foundation is very questionable.

Next, certainstatements 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 describeit; further, there is no gravity under (flat) spacetime without curvature, andonly when spacetime is curved does gravity exist. Yet, as for the question ofwhat the essence of gravity is in relativistic mechanics, GR never answers itin an affirmative way; nor can a formula be found in relativistic mechanics soas to calculate the magnitude of gravity, and how can this situation beacceptable?! I believe spacetime is only a concept adopted for the purpose ofmaking physical analysis, and in no way it represents the physical reality.Given these facts, I certainly do not accept the existence of the so-calledgravitational waves.

Then,there is the question of the propagation speed of the so-called gravitationalwaves, and

travellingat light speed c seems to suggest that they belong to the electromagneticspectrum

family, yetnothing is more absurd than this! Gravitational theory has been developed

independentof, and parallel to, electromagnetic theory, and the former can certainlyborrow

ideas andmethods from the latter, but how can it be that the so-called gravitationalwave is

simply assigned the speed c of electromagneticwaves (or light) ? Within the particle family of the Standard Model, elementaryparticles are classified into three basic types: hadron, lepton, andpropagator, and within the category of propagator, there are bosons which actas carrier for weak nuclear force, gluons as carrier of strong nuclear force,and photons as carrier of electromagnetic force. According to GR, the carrierfor gravity force (actually there is no such force as gravity in GR) isgraviton, yet search of graviton in a period of many years has failed to findits trace at all.

 But this isonly one of many difficulties faced by this theory, for other examples: Ifgravitational wave doesexist and does travel at the speed of light, then gravitons would also travelat the speed of light,i.e., same as photons, which conclusion is far-fetched and ridiculous. In fact,many researchershave pointed out that the propagation speed of gravity is far exceeding thespeed of light(but not infinity), and what is being referred to here by the term of gravity isapparently not gravitationalwaves either. It can be inferred that the existence of gravitational waves,just as that ofgravitons, is very dubious, and at least it needs to be further studied; butwhat obviously is not needed ispropaganda and brainwash.

Lastly, we have noticed that the way forthe LIGOs in the United States to find the so-called gravitational waves is to “receivea signal”—two detectors with a separation of around 3000 km both received the samesignal, or waveform, but with a time difference of 7.1 ms, which seems not tobe a reliable and trustworthy way of making a scientific discovery, since youcannot be absolutely certain that it is indeed caused by gravitational waves.The time for the receipt of this signal is 23:50 on September 14, 2014, andalthough the signal-to-noise ratio was relatively high, yet there is still a possibilitythat it was caused by other factors, for example, slightterrestrial quake or vibrating motions between the two detectors. It iswell known that, when collecting scientific evidence 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 assertedthat, the current discovery regarding gravitational wave, is still somedistance away from the assurance brought about by what Hertz discovered by hiselectromagnetic experiments in 1887, and it certainly needs further work todetermine whether what the LIGOs have found is a scientific truth or just adisturbance or distraction.

February 15, 2016; by Huang Zhixun

(The author of this note is a professor andPh. D supervisor at the Communication University of China in Beijing)

                                emai :huangzhixun@gmail.com,wellkome to discuss