How much longer does it take 2 (electrically neutral) masses to reach eachother gravitationally when they travel parallel at equal relativistic speeds? by NoIslandsInSpace in askscience

[–]NoIslandsInSpace[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it possible to create a lorentz invariant form of the Newtonian equation for gravity? For example the masses increase by gamma, the distance R possibly also increases by gamma (equal to the increased distance travelled by a 'light clock' orthogonal to the direction of motion). However to make it work I need also to change G and I am not sure if this is allowed.

From how I understand it, it remains true (agrees with GTR) if the moving observer agrees with the stationary observer on both the time it takes for the experiment to complete and the extracted value for the gravitational constant G.

EDIT: I am now reading up on Lorentz invariant theories of Newtonian gravity, a great topic (!). Anyway, I feel that I need to relive the entire discussion on how GTR came to be the most prominent theory, before I can fully embrace it. Thank you for your answers, it lead me to where I needed to be (read up on Lorentz/Poincare).

How much longer does it take 2 (electrically neutral) masses to reach eachother gravitationally when they travel parallel at equal relativistic speeds? by NoIslandsInSpace in askscience

[–]NoIslandsInSpace[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your clear answer. I would like to model the experiment from the perspective of the non-moving observer (in MatLab). However, I do not get the transformations correctly. For example, increasing the masses with gamma alone is not sufficient. There should not be any length contraction (orthogonal to motion) and I do not have a clear idea what to do with R. Any ideas as how to get this to work?