Gravitational waves, energy and Feynman’s “sticky bead”

Abstract

It is noted that in the broader sense, gravitational waves viewed as spacetime curvature which necessarily accompanies electromagnetic waves at the speed of light, are the routine perception of our everyday experience. We focus on the energy issue and Feynman’s “sticky bead” argument which has been regarded as central in supporting the conclusion that gravitational waves carry energy through the vacuum in general relativity. We discuss the essential neglected aspects of his approach which leads to the conclusion that gravitational waves would not cause Feynman’s bead to heat the stick on which it would supposedly rub. This opens the way to an examination of the entire issue of energy in general relativity. We briefly discuss our naturally-defined totally invariant spacetime energy expression for general relativity incorporating the contribution from gravity. When the cosmological term is included in the field equations, our energy expression includes the vacuum energy as required.