<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[tvf]: whereas gravitational force is proportional to mass times speed squared
[mechanic]: I thought force is proportional to acceleration and energy is proportional to speed squared.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
Every shortcut must exact a toll. When I started out, I said the first formula related the universal gravitational constant G to the graviton properties. I then started referring loosely to that as the gravitational force formula. But of course, big-G is not a force. It has dimensions of L^3/(M*T^2).
Big-G is proportional to graviton speed squared. The formula is derived from scratch in the PG book. It's not easy to summarize here. But in an intuitive sense, the graviton field is more like stored energy (proportional to speed squared) than it is like momentum (proportional to speed) because the field has no preferred direction. Momentum is a vector (number <i>and</i> direction). -|Tom|-
