A graviton would have to be both massless and energyless. Thus it would be unaffected by gravity.
It also means it can not have a "frequency" like light does (because lacking any energy there is no frequency to change).
It must also always move at the speed of light, and could not exist at any slower speed. (Because to slow down, would imply a change in its energy, which it can not do.)
But that means it can't interact in a way that is detectable, other than gravity.
Because you can not give it energy, you can also never create it artificially. If you did, you would be creating gravitational force out of nothing, which is impossible because it violates conservation of energy, and you can not pay for that violation because you can not give it energy.
It's pretty much the ultimate impossible to study particle.
This comment is almost completely wrong. It muddles together classical and quantum reasoning in any incoherent way.
Gravitons are best understood as the quanta of the effective qft governed by the Einstein Hilbert action. This mathematical model is the universal low energy approximation to any quantum theory that reduces to general relativity.
Gravitons need to be massless. They need not be zero energy. They can indeed be associated with frequency. They do couple to gravitational backgrounds and to other gravitons. You can crate them just like any other field quanta. The barrier to studying gravitons the way we do photons is that they couple very weakly to other systems.
How would that work exactly? First of all it means they could not escape a black hole, since they would be carrying energy out of it. It also means they would not travel in straight lines, since by carrying energy, they are subject to gravitational force, and boy of boy what a mess that would make of things if the gravity carrier was affected by its own gravity (or even the gravity of the neighbors).
Second when the graviton "landed" it would have to transfer energy. If they only act via gravity, how would you transfer energy to or from them?
And then if they carry energy, then what, energy is constantly streaming out of every particle in the universe? Or are you proposing two kinds of gravitons, those that carry energy and those that don't?
> They can indeed be associated with frequency.
Really? So how would their measured effects vary as their frequency varied?
Are you confusing gravitational waves with gravitons? The two are not the same.
> You can crate them just like any other field quanta.
No you could not because if you did you would be creating gravitational force out of nothing, which is impossible (violates a whole bunch on conservation laws).
It also means it can not have a "frequency" like light does (because lacking any energy there is no frequency to change).
It must also always move at the speed of light, and could not exist at any slower speed. (Because to slow down, would imply a change in its energy, which it can not do.)
But that means it can't interact in a way that is detectable, other than gravity.
Because you can not give it energy, you can also never create it artificially. If you did, you would be creating gravitational force out of nothing, which is impossible because it violates conservation of energy, and you can not pay for that violation because you can not give it energy.
It's pretty much the ultimate impossible to study particle.