Theory of Gravity
by Nick Summers
Selected quotes from Albert Einstein
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Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. |
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Since the mathematicians invaded Relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore. |
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Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. |
What is Gravity? This website attempts to explain an alternative theory of gravity
To get an understanding of what causes gravity it is important to get a feel for what 'Energy' actually is, and luckily, we can see(1) it, we can touch(2) it and we can feel(3) its effect on the bottom of our feet. The statement *Gravity makes an apple fall to the ground* is obviously true but it is similar to saying *Fire makes us warm*. In the case of fire, it is electromagnetic radiation that makes us warm, a form of energy. Matter is another form of energy and this website attempts to explain how gravity is caused by a third form.
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 sources 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 one of three primary energy configurations. These are summarised below.
To clarify,energy exists in three basic primary states, two of which we can probably visualise reasonably easily and these are matter which has rotational components and electromagnetic radiation which has vibrational components. The third state is a bit more difficult to get a feel for but it is this third state, energy in linear motion, that causes the effect of gravity.
So what is 'energy in linear motion'?
Matter naturally follows the path of least resistance. This geodesic path is determined by the movement of energy, commonly refered to as 'dark energy'.
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 to 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 dynamic 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 causes the structural dynamics of matter to deteriorate over time causing a gradual transmutation to heavier elements. If you ever wondered where our complete spectrum of elements on Earth originated(4) then this is it. Ultimately, matter will finally 'disolve' or return into its base state, which happens to be linear motional energy, dark 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".
... of Gravity, Time and Space
Einstein's and now main stream's current gravity theory is based on the belief that if you were accelerating in a space craft you wouldn't be able to distinguish between this experience and that of gravity. It was then decided that acceleration and gravity were the same, the Equivalence principle. The next challenge was to explain how we could be accelerating upwards with 1g without apparently moving and even more of a challenge to explain why two masses tend to move together.
For acceleration, you need a spatial component and a time component hence the evolution of the idea of 'spacetime', a bundling of these two dependent dimensions together. Gravity is explained as a natural property of matter which has the ability to warp or distort this 'spacetime'. The passage of time varies the closer you get to a gravity source and the geometry of the spatial component changes whereby our idea of a straight line becomes more and more curved.
The maths work, the model accurately describes observed physical reality but it doesn't explain the "why and how?". Why does matter warp space and time? Could observed phenomena be explained in any other way?
To understand gravity you have to fully understand matter and all its intricacies and to achieve this you need to create basic matter from the ingredients existing in a massless universe.
It is difficult for us, as humans and a product of the physical universe, to comprehend a universe where all matter has been converted to energy. Are you able to imagine the nature of what is going on in that environment? There would be radiation in abundance, maybe magnetic fields, dark energy, and, who knows what else, perhaps even intelligence but strictly no particles of any description, real or hypothetical - Higgs bosons, gravitons, neutrinos, fermions etc.
You might consider the photon effect an exception, seeing as I have just mentioned the fact that radiation would still exist. Photons are an oddity in that they are like the troughs and peaks of waves, oscillating positive then negative with resultant overall mass of zero, until they break on the metaphorical beach. Whenever you have base energy accelerating or decelerating you have a mass effect.
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' or dark 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.
Now, to make things more complicated, if you go one way and I go the other at speeds approaching that of light we will have a real speed of separation 'relative' to each other of nearly twice the speed of light. However, if I look at you and you look at me, we will appear not to be going any faster away from each other than 'c'. The illusion is created by a limitation of the properties of the data carrier by which we measure speed, namely light.
To illustrate this limitation with a slowed down example, imagine a rowing boat with the oarsman rythmically rowing the boat across a lake. You are at the side of the lake, now blindfold yourself and put a hand in the water. For the sake of the experiment, you can feel a dominant ripple created by the splash of the oars as it reaches the shore. Here is the relevant bit, irrespective of how fast the boat is being rowed the ripples from the oars will travel across the water with the same speed. How can you tell how fast the boat is moving? You might have to get the blindfold off at this stage, but it will be proportional to the interval between the dominant ripples multiplied by the distance between one peak and the next.
The faster the boat goes the slower the interval of successive ripples hitting your hand and the greater will be the wavelength. I hope you can see the similarity between this scenario and that of light. Basically, the speed of light, but not the wavelength or frequency, is independent of the relative speed of the object that is transmitting it.
Perpetual motion? Limitless energy? - maybe ...
Now, I'm not sure about this one but it does provide food for thought. 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 (if you have some doubt as to whether the top of the column will have more or less gravity then please look at data compiled by the Grace probe which shows increased gravitation over mountain ranges). The right-hand side of the disk is an area of slightly lower gravitational attraction.
This imbalance may cause the disk to rotate in the direction shown without breaking any laws of thermodymamics as gravitational energy is the power source in this case.
You may care to check out www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/gravshld.htm which describes a hypothetical gravity blocking system and provides arguments as to why their proposed machine won't work.
There are obviously lots of questions that need answering.
For example...
Disclaimer
The text on this website is only my opinion on the mechanics of gravitational attraction. It is hypothesis, as are all current gravity theories.
Nick Summers
30th Oct 2005
To get an understanding of what causes gravity it is important to get a feel for what 'Energy' actually is, and luckily, we can see(1) it, we can touch(2) it and we can feel(3) its effect on the bottom of our feet. The statement *Gravity makes an apple fall to the ground* is obviously true but it is similar to saying *Fire makes us warm*. In the case of fire, it is electromagnetic radiation that makes us warm, a form of energy. Matter is another form of energy and this website attempts to explain how gravity is caused by a third form.
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 sources 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 one of three primary energy configurations. These are summarised below.
|
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To clarify,energy exists in three basic primary states, two of which we can probably visualise reasonably easily and these are matter which has rotational components and electromagnetic radiation which has vibrational components. The third state is a bit more difficult to get a feel for but it is this third state, energy in linear motion, that causes the effect of gravity.
So what is 'energy in linear motion'?
Matter naturally follows the path of least resistance. This geodesic path is determined by the movement of energy, commonly refered to as 'dark energy'.
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 to 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 dynamic 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 causes the structural dynamics of matter to deteriorate over time causing a gradual transmutation to heavier elements. If you ever wondered where our complete spectrum of elements on Earth originated(4) then this is it. Ultimately, matter will finally 'disolve' or return into its base state, which happens to be linear motional energy, dark 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".
... of Gravity, Time and Space
Einstein's and now main stream's current gravity theory is based on the belief that if you were accelerating in a space craft you wouldn't be able to distinguish between this experience and that of gravity. It was then decided that acceleration and gravity were the same, the Equivalence principle. The next challenge was to explain how we could be accelerating upwards with 1g without apparently moving and even more of a challenge to explain why two masses tend to move together.
For acceleration, you need a spatial component and a time component hence the evolution of the idea of 'spacetime', a bundling of these two dependent dimensions together. Gravity is explained as a natural property of matter which has the ability to warp or distort this 'spacetime'. The passage of time varies the closer you get to a gravity source and the geometry of the spatial component changes whereby our idea of a straight line becomes more and more curved.
The maths work, the model accurately describes observed physical reality but it doesn't explain the "why and how?". Why does matter warp space and time? Could observed phenomena be explained in any other way?
To understand gravity you have to fully understand matter and all its intricacies and to achieve this you need to create basic matter from the ingredients existing in a massless universe.
It is difficult for us, as humans and a product of the physical universe, to comprehend a universe where all matter has been converted to energy. Are you able to imagine the nature of what is going on in that environment? There would be radiation in abundance, maybe magnetic fields, dark energy, and, who knows what else, perhaps even intelligence but strictly no particles of any description, real or hypothetical - Higgs bosons, gravitons, neutrinos, fermions etc.
You might consider the photon effect an exception, seeing as I have just mentioned the fact that radiation would still exist. Photons are an oddity in that they are like the troughs and peaks of waves, oscillating positive then negative with resultant overall mass of zero, until they break on the metaphorical beach. Whenever you have base energy accelerating or decelerating you have a mass effect.
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' or dark 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.
Now, to make things more complicated, if you go one way and I go the other at speeds approaching that of light we will have a real speed of separation 'relative' to each other of nearly twice the speed of light. However, if I look at you and you look at me, we will appear not to be going any faster away from each other than 'c'. The illusion is created by a limitation of the properties of the data carrier by which we measure speed, namely light.
To illustrate this limitation with a slowed down example, imagine a rowing boat with the oarsman rythmically rowing the boat across a lake. You are at the side of the lake, now blindfold yourself and put a hand in the water. For the sake of the experiment, you can feel a dominant ripple created by the splash of the oars as it reaches the shore. Here is the relevant bit, irrespective of how fast the boat is being rowed the ripples from the oars will travel across the water with the same speed. How can you tell how fast the boat is moving? You might have to get the blindfold off at this stage, but it will be proportional to the interval between the dominant ripples multiplied by the distance between one peak and the next.
The faster the boat goes the slower the interval of successive ripples hitting your hand and the greater will be the wavelength. I hope you can see the similarity between this scenario and that of light. Basically, the speed of light, but not the wavelength or frequency, is independent of the relative speed of the object that is transmitting it.
Perpetual motion? Limitless energy? - maybe ...
Now, I'm not sure about this one but it does provide food for thought. 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 (if you have some doubt as to whether the top of the column will have more or less gravity then please look at data compiled by the Grace probe which shows increased gravitation over mountain ranges). The right-hand side of the disk is an area of slightly lower gravitational attraction.
This imbalance may cause the disk to rotate in the direction shown without breaking any laws of thermodymamics as gravitational energy is the power source in this case.
You may care to check out www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/gravshld.htm which describes a hypothetical gravity blocking system and provides arguments as to why their proposed machine won't work.
---------------------------
There are obviously lots of questions that need answering.
For example...
|
Is the gravity energy influx causing the earth to get heavier or lighter? |
|
|
Does the gravity energy influx cause the centre of the earth to get hotter? |
|
|
Is gravity a movement of energy at all or is it just an energy gradient? |
Disclaimer
The text on this website is only my opinion on the mechanics of gravitational attraction. It is hypothesis, as are all current gravity theories.
Nick Summers
30th Oct 2005
Notes 1, 2, 3, 4,
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