According to a new theoretical study, sheet-like structures in the gravitational field can break apart and reconnect in new arrangements, much like the magnetic field lines that unleash solar flares.
Magnetic field lines are normally "frozen" into plasma — the hot, electrically charged gas that makes up stars — and carried along wherever it flows. The lines can be stretched and twisted, but not cut. Where this rule breaks down, they can snap and rejoin in a process called magnetic reconnection, releasing pent-up energy in explosive bursts such as solar flares.
"Gravity and magnetism describe very different aspects of nature, so there's no obvious reason to expect them to behave alike," Comisso said. "But when we express Einstein's equations in a particular mathematical form, some of the same principles that govern magnetic fields also emerge in gravity. We wanted to understand whether those similarities extended to reconnection itself."
In a prior study published in the journal Physical Review Letters earlier this year, the researchers applied this framework to gravity. That study suggested that gravitational fields can form two-dimensional structures called gravitational field sheets. Of the sheets' two dimensions, one stretches through space and the other through time — so each sheet is the trail a line leaves as time passes. A snapshot at any instant therefore catches each sheet as a line, akin to the field lines drawn around a magnet. And, like magnetic field lines frozen into a plasma, "under certain conditions, these sheets evolve without breaking or changing how they are connected," Comisso said.
An illustration depicting the sun’s magnetic field lines over an image taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. When magnetic loops get stretched to their limit, they snap and reconnect, triggering solar flares. (Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL)Rewiring gravity
The researchers showed that breaking the frozen-in rule doesn't, by itself, guarantee reconnection. Sometimes, the sheets merely slip relative to the flow that carries them, staying intact because they remain frozen into a different flow. Genuine reconnection happens only when no such alternative flow exists.
Reconnection also alters gravitational helicity, the gravitational counterpart of a quantity that measures how twisted and interlinked magnetic field lines are. Frozen-in sheets keep their helicity fixed, but reconnection can create or destroy it.
"Einstein developed his theory more than a century ago, and it has passed an extraordinary number of experimental tests," he added. "Yet even after more than a century, there are still new insights to be gained from those same equations."
Clues from colliding black holes
Related storiesWhat could trigger gravitational reconnection in nature remains an open question. Among the candidates the researchers suggested are the singularities thought to lurk at the hearts of black holes and the combined effect of gravitational ripples that are too small to track individually. Quantum effects linked to Hawking radiation — the faint glow that black holes are predicted to emit — could also play a part.
Such collisions send out ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, which detectors such as LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) have been recording since 2015. "We'd like to understand whether gravitational reconnection could contribute to transferring energy, and whether it might leave a recognizable signature in gravitational waves," Comisso added. "We don't know the answers yet, but these are questions that we can now begin to investigate."
Hence then, the article about gravity can reconnect like the sun s magnetic field a fresh look at einstein s equations reveals was published today ( ) and is available on Live Science ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Gravity can reconnect like the sun's magnetic field, a fresh look at Einstein's equations reveals )
Also on site :