The graviton emission from the capacitor thread reminds me of a connection
that came up in class a few weeks ago.
Doing the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom yet once more, I was going on
about how Rutherford knew that his orbiting electrons wouldn't stay up
because they would radiate their energy away very quickly, and I got asked
why gravitational orbits are possible but electrical ones are not. This made
me "connect" on the fact that gravity waves would carry away the energy of
the planet in an analogous way (at least at this level of discussion). The
timescale is a bit different, no doubt reflecting something about the
relative strengths of the interactions.
Question: (i) How long would a Rutherford-type electron in a Rutherford-type
H atom (i.e. a classical orbit) take to lose its energy by em radiation?
(ii) Ignoring the em radiation, how long would the same system
take to radiate its energy gravitationally?
(iii) Perhaps instead of (ii) - How long would the earth take to
fall into the sun due to its gravitational radiation?
I imagine someone has worked out the answer to (i) but the other questions I
have no idea about. I don't even know if I've defined them clearly. What I'm
after is some numbers that I can pronounce while waving my hands.
Mark.
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Mark Sylvester
United World College of the Adriatic, Duino, Trieste, Italy.
msylvest@spin.it
tel: +39 40 3739 255
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