I am a professional software developer, not a professional physicist; however, I have had a keen interest in physics since early childhood, and was seriously considering a career in the field upon entering college. I am open to constructive criticism from those in the field; please read the following post with the understanding that I am expressing my opinions and not putting forward a serious scientific paper. I do, however, feel I have a better understanding of physics than the average amateur physicist; but again, I would appreciate any qualified individual coming forward with perceived holes in my understanding.
Gauge bosons are the conveyers of the forces of nature. For example, a photon conveys the electro-magnetic force. The graviton is proposed to convey the force of gravity; however, although both particles are gauge bosons, there is a very big difference between a graviton and a photon. The key difference is that there is empirical evidence supporting the existence of photons. Even if one were for some reason mistrust the results of scientific experiments, the evidence for photons is all around us in everything we see. Our vision is the result of numerous photons colliding with the electrons in the photoreceptive cells of our retinas. However, despite the significant roll gravity plays in our universe, a graviton has yet to be detected in any way. Although, something not being detected at a certain point in time is not proof of non-existence; it is my personal position that gravitons have yet to be detected precisely because they do not exist.
Before I continue, I will mention that some might posit that the graviton is simply, “the quantity of which we measure the interaction of gravity with particles of mass.” It is hard to deny the existence of the graviton if it is given this definition; however, I feel like this is a semantic work around. The photon is said to be a particle because electro-magnetic radiation is observed to behave as a particle when coming into contact with an electron cloud. In addition, electro-magnetic energy has been observed to be quantized for a very long time; where is there is absolutely no evidence to support gravitational energy being quantized. That is to say, light only comes in discrete steps of energy. A light beam cannot be in whatever frequency one desires, but instead, its frequency is strictly limited to values allowed by the laws physics; hence, lending credence to calling the photon a particle.
I will admit a personal bias to not believing things that have yet to be proven both rationally and empirically; however, my disbelief in the graviton is not without rational basis. The hypothetical graviton appears to directly contradict the theory of relativity. Einstein’s relativity claims that gravity is the result of curved space-time, not some mystical gauge boson. Unlike the graviton, relativity has empirical evidence supporting it. Gravitational lensing, as well numerous other predictions of relativity, have been observed in the real world. It would be absurd to throw out a perfectly reasonable theory with evidence supporting it in favor of a theory with no evidence. However, I doubt many proponents of gravitons would favor throwing out relativity, but would probably prefer some strange work around akin to hammering a square peg into a round hole.
In order to reconcile relativity with the existence of gravitons we either have to demonstrate how gravitons can cause gravitational lensing, or assert prior observations of gravitational lensing were the result of some other natural phenomenon. In order to assert the graviton is the cause of gravitational lensing, a model of the interaction of the photon and the graviton must be proposed. Although, the results of my Google search for “graviton photon interaction” were a bit sparser than I would have liked, I came across an interesting article by Matthew R. Edwards. It was titled Photon-Graviton Recycling as Cause of Gravitation and was located in the third issue of volume 14 of the Apeiron publication. The publication date was July 2007 and the article can be found at the following URL, http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V14NO3PDF/V14N3EDW.pdf. According to this article, photons lose energy when traveling through space because of interactions with gravitons. I therefore deduce, perhaps wrongly, that in this model, gravitational lensing is caused by light refraction as the photon either slows down when entering an area of higher graviton concentration, or speeds up when entering an area of lower graviton concentration. If this is the case, my position has the potential to be falsified by comparing the speed of light at a point of high gravitation to the speed of light at a point of low gravitation. I am not sure how one would go about setting up this type of experiment, but if Edwards is correct, the speed of light after taking into account coronal gas density, should be slower near the sun than the speed of light at a point farther out in the solar system. I do, however, realize I may be straw-manning, as the Apeiron publication may not necessarily speak for the physics community at large.
Biologist Richard Dawkins has noted that humans have the tendency to make false positives in association recognition. That is to say, people will tend to see patterns where they do not exist. The desire of even extremely intelligent people to see patterns can be very strong; this tendency helped our ancestors survive in a vast and confusing world. I feel as if the graviton comes from the desire to fit gravity into the pattern of the other three known forces. It is reasonable to think that gravity might have a gauge boson because electro-magnetism does; however, there is no scientific reason why this must be the case.
I believe that attempts to combine gravity with the other three known forces have failed, and will continue to fail, because gravity is simply a very different “animal”. I also feel as if the tendency of some physicists to analyze the world in terms of symmetry is misguided and needs to be checked. The universe is not symmetrical and there absolutely no logical reason why it should be. Symmetry is like beauty, it is extremely subjective, and people tend to like it. In addition, the word “symmetrical” is ambiguous. When you say symmetrical, do you mean in terms of a vertical orientation? Or do you mean in terms of a horizontal one? Maybe, your perspective is not in terms of any spacial dimension at all?
Hopefully the activation of the Large Hadron Collider will help settle this issue. Perhaps the graviton will be found to be real and my position will be found to be incorrect. If that is the case, I will gladly change my mind in the spirit of truth finding and intellectual honesty. However, more than the graviton, the goal of this posting is to warn against the dangers of unscientific thinking disguised as rational means to obtaining knowledge. Symmetry is beautiful, and often part of our universe, but it is not a valid scientific approach.
