Re: Stupid Question related to Bohr Theory

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Do any of you know if our earth-sun system is a source of
> gravitational waves?  I am trying to think about this
> system like a Bohr atom.  It seems like the radius of the
> first Bohr Orbit is impossibly small so it seems unlikely
> that the earth is in the ground state.  Also, the first
> Bohr orbit is probably smaller than the Schwarzschildt
> Radius.  I know that the radiation rate would be very
> small, but I would really like to know if, conceptually at
> least this system is radiating away energy.  Does any one
> know?

The answer is that the earth-Sun system *per se* is not a
source of gravitational waves, but the solar system is, and
if only the Earth and Sun were in it then they would radiate
gravitational waves. The effect, however, is undetectable as
a matter of practice. That is not the case for the famous
"double pulsar", PSR 1619+13 (or something like that). Its
orbit changes (precesses) in a manner which is consistent
with a mechanism of energy loss through gravitational
radiation. Taylor and Hulse got a Nobel Prize for that
discovery.

As the Bohr theory does not predict the rate at which energy
is lost by hydrogen atoms I doubt that you need to resort to
the pulsar example. Please do try your idea, but think about
other possibilities as well. Finding "the hydrogen atom" of
gravity may be an important step. In case anyone doesn't
know it already, the two body problem has not been solved in
GR in the sense that it (the Kepler problem) has been solved
in Newtonian mechanics.

Leigh