Talk: Gravity wave

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The page doesn't say what a gravitational wave is.

It does now -- I hope satisfactorily. — Toby 10:24 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

In case anybody does know: are gravitational waves supposed to be longitudinal waves or transverse waves? Ellywa 12:52, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I got an answer from user:Andre Engels at nl:wikipedia, generally it is thought that these waves are transverse, based on general relativity. Ellywa 07:54, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It has been proposed that they are a longitudinal scalar waves by some researchers (which my bet is on, though I'm probably wrong ... so everyone will have to wait for further data). It is really unknown [and may exhibit feature of both (i.e., Duality)]. JDR

Gravitational waves do not change the strength of gravity.

The concept of "the strength of gravity will go up and down as a gravitational wave passes" is, at least for the case of small amplitudes, wrong.

A GW changes the distance between freely falling test particles, but it will not change the strength of gravity as such. Given a GW with sufficient amplitude passing by while you are standing on a bathroom scale, the reading on the scale would not change. Your legs might be shortened (or lengthened, depending on the phase of the wave), though.