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by duality 2756 days ago
"[T]he gravitational interaction is exchanged by a spin-2 field, whereas the electromagnetic force is exchanged by a spin-1 field. Note that for this to be the case, you do not need to speak about the messenger particle that is associated with the force if you quantize it (gravitons or photons). It’s simply a statement about the type of interaction, not about the quantization. Again, you don’t get to choose this behavior. Once you work with General Relativity, you are stuck with the spin-2 field and you conclude: like charges attract and unlike charges repel."

There was a bit of discussion about this on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18609375 as well. Working through the exercise of how spin-2 mediated forces differ from spin-1 is a worthwhile exercise for those who are so inclined.

1 comments

If negative mass experiences an attractive force (that is, one that adds momentum toward the source of the force), doesn't that push it away? After all, with negative mass, the momentum vector and the velocity vector point in opposite directions.