An intuitive contribution to the gravity debate
What is Gravity? This website attempts to explain gravity
Gravity is caused by a form of energy. You can look up the meaning of the word 'energy' in a dictionary and more than likely it will say energy is the ability to do work of some kind, ie. heat something up or move something. Then it will list the common types of energy - chemical, nuclear, thermal, magnetic, kinetic, potential etc.
That's ok but we need to go deeper because these listed common types can each be categorised into three primary energy configurations or dimensional forms. These are summarised below.
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To clarify, raw energy exists in three basic primary states, two of which we can probably visualise reasonably easily and these are matter which has a rotational component and electromagnetic radiation which has a vibrational component. The third state is a bit more difficult to get a feel for but it is this third state that causes the effect of gravity.
So, we have matter which is a rotational form of energy, we have electromagnetic radiation which is an oscillatory or vibrational form of energy and lastly we have this linear form which is energy in motion.
So what is this 'energy in linear motion'?,
Probably, the easiest way to understand it is if I said that a 'black hole' does not suck in matter but sucks in this linear motional form of energy. Matter just happens to flow along with it.
Keeping what I have said above in mind, I will now try and explain why we have gravity in the vicinity of matter.
Gravity is a consequence of the structure of matter.
All matter, to a greater or lesser extent, is unstable and in a state of decay.
Without delving too deeply into the world of elementary particles, the geometric mechanism that defines base matter is more or less the same. A helpful analogy is a tornado where high energy air spirals around the low pressure air in the centre. Fundamental matter is like an energy version of a tornado.
The decay of matter, stated above, is the result of an ingress of "motional energy" very slowly neutralising matter's 'low energy' core. Interestingly, this ingress ultimately causes the dynamics of the structure of any matter to deteriorate over time. In the greater universe, matter will finally 'disolve' or return into its base state, which happens to be linear motional energy.
Gravity is the cumulative effect of the flow of energy. The larger the mass of an object the more decaying subatomic particles there are to contribute to the strength of the gravitational force. It is the movement of this flow which drags us with it. Forgive the analogy - it's as if we are standing underneath a waterfall made of dark energy. The "push of gravity" is a more appropriate phrase than "the pull of gravity".
There is debate about whether gravity pushes or pulls and there are convincing arguments for and against. Whatever your viewpoint you need to be able to answer this, " a log of wood is floating down a river. Is the log being pushed down the river or pulled?". There is a distinct similarity between the river and 'energy in linear motion'. The only difference is that one has mass the other is massless.
Is faster than light travel possible?
What has gravity got to do with this? Not a lot but it helps to get a clearer understanding for what 'motional energy' is.
The answer is Yes and No.
There are some stipulations that have to be agreed upon and these will decide whether you get a yes or a no answer.
If you are talking about a physical object travelling in 'our' space then the answer is no. The reason for this is that physical earthly objects are made of matter - protons, neutrons, electrons etc.. The faster you push them through space two things happen. The first is that matter starts to become unstable and transmutes back into another form of energised field (e=mc2). Secondly when high speeds are reached a 'wake' is created, similar to the wake behind a speed boat if you can visualise what I mean.
This wake is turbulent field. What you are seeing is matter being created, albeit momentarily, before it dissipates. This creation of matter requires energy and has to come from whatever propulsion method you may choose. Travelling faster than light with these set of criteria is not looking good.
The 'yes' answer requires either that you travel in an area of space where space itself is helping you along, similar to travelling down stream in a river, or that you isolate physical matter from the so called 'vacuum' of space. Space isn't a vacuum. It is permeated by any of the three states of energy as mentioned above.
Incidentally, there are a host of other terms which are probably describing the same thing - 'aether', 'quintessence' (fifth element) 'quantum state', 'Hubble flow', 'Higgs' field and the current vogue is 'dark energy or dark matter'. This 'linear motional energy' dictates the motion of planets round the sun, the motion of galaxies, the expansion of the universe, the interaction of elementary particles in the nuclei of atoms and what we experience as gravity
Perpetual motion? Limitless energy? - maybe ...
Now, I'm not sure about this one. The sketch above shows a tall column of lead standing perfectly vertical and a disk free to rotate positioned on the top. The disk has its left hemisphere in an area of increased gravitational attraction due to the earth's gravity plus that gravity contributed by the mass of the lead column. The right-hand side of the disk is an area of lower gravitational attraction. This imbalance may cause the disk to rotate in the direction shown.
Einstein predicted that time runs at different rates in gravitational fields of different strengths. This was first tested in 1962 using a pair of very accurate clocks mounted at the top and bottom of a water tower. The clock at the bottom, i.e. nearer the Earth, was found to run slower, in exact agreement with General Relativity.
The clocks are not actually ticking at different rates they just appear to be and when they are brought back together again they will show the same time, after allowing for the effect any acceleration has had on the clock's physical components. It's also worth bearing in mind that there is more than one type of time. Biological time and mechanical time as measured by a physical apparatus, may not always 'tick' at the same rate.
This leads directly to 'Gravitational Redshift', here again predicted by Einstein. The redshift is the result, pure and simple, of light influenced by the movement of motional energy (dark energy, the aether or whatever term you feel comfortable with) through which it is travelling.
The movement of the aether field is gravity.
See Pound-Rebka experiment 1959 for more information on gravitational redshift.
Next, take a look at the image above and imagine a clock at the top and bottom of the tall grey (lead) tower. If you are sitting at the top looking down at the clock at the bottom the light is going to take longer to get to you because it is travelling against the flow of the aether. So you will say to yourself 'aha - the clock at the bottom is (say) 0.05 second slower than this one next to me at the top'. You then climb down the tower and look up at the clock you left up there and to your amazement you see that, this time,it is the clock at the top that is running slower but not by the .05 seconds but by .025 second. This is because the light is travelling with the aether. In other words light does travel at different speeds depending on what medium it is travelling through.
The 1962 clock tower experiment is mentioned in Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time.
Well, the experiment above works for me but you may care to check out www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/gravshld.htm which also describes a method of locally modifying the force of gravity.
For a series of table-top gravity experiments see
www.simplegravity.com/gravityfun.html
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There are obviously lots of questions that need answering.
For example...
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Is the gravity influx causing the earth to get heavier or lighter? |
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Does the gravity influx cause the centre of the earth to get hot? |
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What energy mechanism causes magnetism to be so strong and gravity so weak? |
Our senses can feel the field that causes gravity, our skin and eyes can feel the vibrations in it, our feet can feel the flow of it and our noses can smell the differing properties of molecules. It can't be that difficult to get an accurate understanding of what gravity really is.
Disclaimer
The text on this website is only my opinion on the mechanics of gravitational attraction. It is hypothesis.
Nick Summers
30th Oct 2005
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