Gravity is something I have had the time to think about a lot recently. I just moved, my car died, and I had a week or so with no TV or internet, so I did a lot of walking and thinking.

Gravity has perplexed me and fascinated me at the same time. Does it not seem strange that matter attracts each other? Other forces have at least had decent descriptions of their mode of action, yet gravity eludes us. On top of that, it presents us with other problems. How does matter know where other matter is? And if it does, how does this information travel faster than the speed of light? Other things that led me in the direction I will soon reveal include the expansion of the universe. Since a point in time a long time ago, the rate of the expansion of the universe has been increasing. Every galaxy is moving away from each other. Einstein commented that the force causing this rapid expansion was staring at him in his equations, but could not pin it down. Take note of his famous equation E = mc^2. Why would the speed of light be the conversion factor for energy and matter? To put it more accurately, energy is matter and vice versa, but where does this c come in? Why does mass slow the passage of time? The closer you are to a large mass, the slower time progresses, agreed by observers in any spot. Yet, when objects move near the speed of light, two observers will disagree on whose clock is running incorrectly. Finally, gravity does not work on quantum scales.

So what direction am I taking this? I have not hammered out details, and am just asking for input, but suppose that space-time (since the two are the same, I'll refer to it as time) comes from somewhere or everywhere at the speed of light. If time were to be antimatter, then as it collides with matter, it creates 100% of the energy/mass of the object. Following this line of thought, gravity would not be a force, but merely the collapse of time between two objects, making them appear to pull together. On top of that, if there was a point in time where the universe began accelerating faster and faster, it would imply that gravity's affect on the expansion of time would be finite, and not infinite as thought. This means that once objects got far enough away from each other, time began expanding unimpeded by energy, creating an expansion that forever increases. This also means that no information has to travel anywhere and energy does not know where the other energy is. However, as two energies come closer and closer, a cone of time expansion will be annihilated and expand wider and wider as the two objects collapse the space between them. This is the general outline of my thinking, but there are many problems I am trying to work out. First off, what is creating all of this time? Is it coming from every direction like the cosmic microwave radiation? Do black holes (which have no time in them, leaving the energy in a form unknown, possibly time) account for anything?

I could be very wrong, but I like the idea of gravity not being a force, but rather a collapse of time between two objects, as it allows two objects to exhibit a force like gravity without any information going between the two. Anyway, so time would be coming from all directions at the speed of light in a sense, and I need to think about this more, but what do you all think? I clearly am missing a lot, but feel like I may be on to something.

gravity is exuded from the subatomic level...that's about all 'they' know....

and yes, gravity and electromagnetism are much faster than the speed of light...they are virtually instantaneous....somehow....

but don't try to tell anyone here that the speed of light is unsurpassable....the scientists won't listen either...

if light is a photon, what is gravity...magnetism...dark energy, even...could an outer shell of dark energy be the opposite of gravity...

the universe contains other dimensions, maybe other universes....but one dimension, our next, contains this universe, but not time....

time is not linear...it just is...here in the physical universe....

sorry, started rambling after seeing your post...

Ramuh I really really really really really like your thinking on this. Like you said, space and time are inseperable, they are one and the same and are merely concepts we use to measure and interact with our environment. Space is defined by time, time is defined by space. It makes complete sense then, that gravitation is the collapse of time. I really love this idea.

I think we really get held back by our language, which hails from a time when we understood less than we do now. We need a new word for spacetime, that unifies the 'two' as they really are. Secondly, for a long time we referred to matter and energy as two different things, whereas now we know that matter is merely energy with particular characteristics. I think that confusion would be lessened if we actually said, everything is energy, and there are two kinds of energy, matter and force. In a nutshell, matter is the kind of energy that acts as a building block of reality, force is the kind of energy that moves around the building blocks and arranges them into form. From a subatomic physics point of view, matter and force can be identified as the two types of elementary particles, Fermions (matter) and Bosons (fundamental forces). A particle is described as a Fermion or Boson depending on if the particle has a half spin or integer spin. The spin of a particle can change from a half spin to an integer spin and vice versa, and this is why matter and force are interchangeable.

Now the very interesting thing in context of your idea Ramuh, is that each fundamental force has a specific Boson associated with it that is supposed to be the mediator of that force. Four fundamental forces, four Bosons. But here is the interesting thing. For three of the fundamental forces, the Strong Nuclear Force, the Electromagnetic Force and the Weak Nuclear Force, we have observations that support the existence of a 1 spin particle that mediates each, respectively the Gluon, Photon, and W & Z Bosons. The Boson that mediates the force of Gravity is supposed to be a 2 spin particle called a Graviton, but it's existence is still completely speculative.

If, as you say, Gravitation is not a force at all but a function of spacetime, then it would make complete sense that there would be no associated Boson. We speculate that at 10^43 to 10^35 seconds after the Big Bang gravitation seperated from the Unified Force, and that this is when the theoretical 'Graviton' emerged. But, it would fit perfectly that this is the moment that the universe expanded/cooled/slowed enough for spacetime to be born and hence for what we observe as gravity to be born as a function of that.

I think you may be onto something that will take scientists a while yet to be able to find a proof for, but that makes complete and utter sense. Soon it won't be just spacetime, it will be spacetimegravitation! This would also completely explain why gravitation does not appear to operate at the quantum level - at the quantum level there is no spacetime in the way that we know it. Spacetime at a molecular level does not emerge until the quantum particles arrange themselves into forms such as protons and neutrons, so that atoms can be created. It takes three quarks to create a proton or neutron, so before they can cluster together, there are just quarks, so at this level there is no spacetime, and hence no gravity.

Makes total complete and utter sense to me. I love it. That's the best idea I've ever heard on this board.

Okay so I'm doing some reading, and I learn that all along Einstein said that Gravity is in fact not a force, but a function of space-time. What the? Why is it then that everywhere you look people are going on about the 4 fundamental forces if the King of physics himself said that gravity is not a force? Why are we chasing a graviton particle at the cost of vast sums of money via the LHC if it has already been demonstrated that gravity is not a force and hence does not require a Boson to mediate it?

There must obviously be something here I don't know about or understand. Ramuh, do you know what the go is on this?

Here's an interesting post from someone on the subject: https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/arch ... 00009.html

Thank you Kezz, I think you beautifully made what I had in my head much more clear. I can have troubles communicating the ideas in my head clearly at times, but I can see you clearly got the gist of it. You kinda cleared out all the jumbo that's more than likely wrong but just brainstorming and got to the core of things.

Anyway, very interesting on Einstein's comments about gravity. I never knew he thought that, yet people must be disagreeing on the matter since gravitons are being nearly assumed to exist in some form somehow by some people. Also, while my particle physics is somewhat behind, from what I remember Bosons are the mediators of force with integer spins and are not bound by the Pauli exclusion principle, while fermions have half integer spins and do obey the principle. Yet what still eludes my understanding is HOW these bosons mediate forces. I am going to have to do a lot of reading today to try and deeply understand exactly what current theories are proposing.

Also I agree that the language that has been used for a long time hinders the ability of people to truly and deeply understand some of physics. If we are heading towards a unified theory and just keep bundling all the names of the previous theories together, we'll end up with electrostrongweakgravitacetimeollapsage or something haha. Just with the language we have today, I find myself feeling somewhat incorrect when I refer to something as just mass, yet sound confusing when I refer to something as energy.

One last thing before I stop rambling and go do some reading, here is an image from wikipedia depicting electrons as waveform probability functions: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... _Plots.png

I especially like the way the probability functions look in the S shell. Looks just like a wave/ripple of collapsed spacetime. Perhaps this could also go to further explain Heisenburg's uncertainty principle. If the fermions are constantly sending local ripples in spacetime, electrons could not possibly pinned down to an exact location, as the locality is chaotic.

More rambling just coming off my head - Hydrogen fuses to form helium, and so on. As you fuse heavier and heavier elements, the energy released drops until eventually you absorb energy to fuse elements. From what I understand this process basically created all the elements that are in place today. Perhaps fusion requires that atoms be pushed together with enough force to create an amplification in their spacetime ripples, rather than destructive interference which would make sense to repel one another. Any move to separate the fermions afterward would create destructive interference with their wave functions, perhaps leading to the strong force. Ahh, I love rambling like this and feel like I'm going somewhere but I really should research first to try and refine my ramblings. I'm just really excited about this because I think this could really make sense and get us closer to a unified theory.

I think we can have some really awesome conversations here because you clearly understand these things in a way I do not. I am far more of a philosophy and words based thinker - I can't remember what side of the brain that is - so I don't understand one little bit of the actual equations that describe all of this. I have never studied physics with the help of any tutor, but I wanted to be able to match my philosophical understanding of reality with scientific understanding. So, I have spent vast amounts of time combing through wiki articles and physics forums, gradually figuring out how to translate everything into concepts I could understand. If you can help me with some of the translation and bridge that gap it would be wonderful.

I'm going to step through my understanding of Bosons, and perhaps we can nut out exactly what this concept of 'mediating' forces really is. The first thing, I think, is to shed the whole 'billiard ball' conceptualisation of 'particles' and begin to think of what we call 'particles' as more like a certain state of energy flux - more fluid like. We know that Bosons are not bound by the Pauli exclusion principle, so they can be in the same 'place' at the same time. Fermions can't be in the same place at the same time, which is how they come to form matter. But, if Bosons can be in the same quantum state, and in the same 'space', wouldn't that mean that in fact they are not in any 'space' at all if they do share the same quantum state? Wouldn't this mean they are in a pre-space state? And, if they are in a pre-space state, would that explain how they can have access to any point in space, and hence appear to have infinite range in space. Infinite, to me, doesn't mean never ending, it means in-definable. Infinite is when a particular unit of measurement cannot be applied to a certain thing - like asking how much an hour weighs.

Coming back to the concept of mediating force, would you say perhaps that by 'mediating' force what is really meant is that the 'particle' actually is the force itself? I say this with the Photon in mind, as it is the Boson with which we are the most familiar. We talk about photons as discrete packages of light/energy, but what does that mean? We're told that a single photon can be cordoned off, but that at the same time light is a wave. So, is the discrete nature of a photon merely conceptual? Is it the smallest point at which you can pinch off a piece of energy and have it still be describable in the same way? Is talking about a 'mediator' of force merely a way of enabling a conceptual symbol to be attached to energy in a certain state of flux?

I think that the fractal nature of the universe means that anything observable at one scale is observable in some way at any other. For this reason I always like to bring things back to analogizing what is right in front of me. Any form in front of me has a limit of how many times I can divide it into pieces before I can no longer attach the same concept or description to it. You can take anything at all as an example. Say an orange even. To start with, I have a single orange. I break it into its pieces, and now I can no longer use the same description, it is now a number of orange pieces. The same goes with water as another example, which is essentially energy in a state of flux such that it can be described as h20. If I keep pulling apart the hydrogen and oxygen eventually I get to the smallest point at which I can pinch off a piece of that energy and still use the same description, a single molecule of water. Water flows in a very similar way to electromagnetism, so could you parallel and say that the h20 molecule is the mediating particle of water?

So in that case, let's come back to gravitation. If this analogy is correct, then a mediating particle is the smallest possible 'piece' of energy behaving in a certain way. If the graviton exists, then, gravity itself must be a kind of energy. But like you said, what if it is not? Is time a form of energy? Is space a form of energy? Do either of these require the concept of mediating particles? I don't believe so. If gravitation is a function of spacetime, then it would not be a form of energy either and would not need a mediating particle. I really do think you are right, and apparently so did Einstein. I'm no physicist, but this really does seem to make sense to me.

I think the main reason we have these concepts of discrete particles is so we have something we can plug into our equations to create accurate descriptions of our environment. Normally we can create a concept, allocate a symbol to it and work with it in our descriptions. Perhaps the reason that we are searching for the graviton is that it has gone the other way around - we have a symbol plugged into our equations that seems to make sense and works out in proofs, but we have attached the wrong concept to it. We can describe and calculate spacetime just fine without mediating particles, we just use minutes and centimetres. Perhaps trying to find the gravition particle is as fruitless as looking for the minute particle?

Again I'm no physicist and I'm wide open to having things explained to me that I'm unaware of. Speaking of what I'm unaware of, could you indulge me a little and describe to me some of what I'm seeing in the Hydrogen Wave Function? If you would be willing to take the time I would love to understand that some more.

This conversation is just the mental exercise I've been craving! Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts....

....just realised I missed a bit. I'm really interested in your comments on the fusion of atoms into heavier elements causing amplification of spacetime ripples. This would tie in very nicely with how it is that greater mass creates greater gravity and hence greater collapse of spacetime. This makes me think of another thing - it is only the existence of fermions in their rigid 'Pauli exclusion' state that even allows space to exist, and hence time, and from what we are talking about, hence gravity. The fermions create space, they are moved about by bosons which creates time, and gravity is then a function of that interplay. So in a round about way, does this mean that gravity emerges from the interactions of fermions and bosons?

Which then makes me think of another thing. Gravitation was supposed to have been the first fundamental force to break off from the unified force after the big bang. At this time the universe was apparently at such a high energy level that all kinds of particles were still completely interchangeable. It was supposedly after this that the first quarks, electrons and neutrinos settled into form, at which time the strong nuclear force has also broken off. What I don't understand, in the context of our discussion, is what could gravity have been exerting its influence on at a stage in the universe in which there effectively was no matter? Any ideas? Do you know about this?

Dude you just made my day, I've been looking for someone to bounce thoughts back and forth with on this subject. With that, I'll break down your post and try to explain what I can.



Exactly. I really think that the billiard ball concept and many scientific 'truths' that used to be in the past puts most people in a mindset that there has to be solid concrete particles making circles around atoms and whatnot is naturally steering people away from what is a much more correct way of looking at things. This stigma also continues because it can be hard to comprehend all things being energy, and the billiard ball visualization makes things easier to grasp on to and works in some cases. As we can now see, though, it is not perfect. Through time, atoms were originally thought to be a soup of protons and other particles, then came the model with a central nucleus and circular orbiting electrons, and now electrons are pretty much considered probability clouds. While the electron has started to make the leap into a somewhat more abstract existence, and many other pieces (especially matter energy equivalence) point towards other things becoming less concrete, it just doesn't seem to be looked at that way.



I think so. Mediating force to me is the biggest issue I have with forces in general. Ok, so we have these bosons, but what do they do that causes a force? Just the common 'they carry the force' doesn't cut it for me. It sounds like another case of grasping on to a billiard ball theory in order to better understand things. Yet at the same time it somehow exhibits wave-particle duality, which is somewhat confusing. This is something I'll have to think about more and read more on.

I'm getting lazy with the quotes. I think the fractal nature of the universe should be used as a great clue of what is going on at all levels. Your have clusters of galaxies, galaxies, solar systems, planetary systems, molecules, atoms, etc all looking fairly alike as you get smaller and smaller. Yet, what happens when you reach a point where there is no longer space?

Ah shoot, I have to go soon, so I'll comment on one more section



The wave function picture shows the probability of finding an electron in space given its energy state. It gets more complex, but the whiter the plot, the higher chance that you will find an electron there. There are four different types of functions depending on the energy level, S (the circular ripple one) P (looks like an D (looks like an X kinda) and F (looks like a flower). This is all very brief, and I didn't end up with many new thoughts in this post. Hopefully I'll get them down later.

I think if I managed to consider it, I would throw too many physicists into a migraine. So I try to avoid my own and simply accept its existence. I don't believe in light speed travel. The friction would vaporize any object at that speed, only a wavelength propagation explains it to me.

These are all of the thoughts I wish to expound on the Law of Gravity:

http://2012forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=6316

there are many things that exist and they exist on a scale far beyond the intelligent s of man we name these things Gravity,time, motion, and so on.
Then we limit our knowledge of these things because we follow the theory of one person or another and keep thinking in side the box.
just like the theory of peak oil every one was in a panic over some thing 50 years before it will even be true.
that is with known research from the dept of energy and yet this theory came out before we had the knowledge of deep water drilling which people can't seem to get in there head that the earth is 3/4 water so oil is limit less supply in the future.
then come the theory that global warming is caused by man and yet the way in which man caused it was to stop putting pollution in the air that was causing acid rain.
with out the pollution more sun light hits the earth because the pollution is not there to reflex it back so the earth is just adjusting to the lack of pollution but people are so bogged down with there ignorance they can't see the forest for the trees.



"If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?"
Saint Aurelius Augustine

Oh wow that's totally awesome. Thanks so much for explaining that to me, that really helps with the visualisation - like we've been discussing, relevant visualisations are key to wrapping your head around all this stuff.

I have to go soon too - dammit - but before I do I thought I'd share a visualisation method that always really helps me. I like to relate everything to my understanding of how multiplayer (especially MMO) video games operate. This may sound silly, but it's the closest thing we actually have to an emulation of reality. Beneath it, is code, nothing but code. Code, is a set of rules, which lead to a set of probability functions - just like reality. On the macro scale of the game, everything looks like it has space, time, physics etc, and the world even has its basic components - triangles, pixels etc. The game world renders only what the player puts their attention on, which to me parallels to the observer effect. The game world is nothing but a probability function until the player snaps the probability function of the game code into the reality of the gameplay.

Thought I'd share this quickly before we chat again as it always helps me with working through questions.

outstanding thread...that was a great post kezz...you to ramuh...

I think you two need to be members of the following forum, and take a look at this very same discussion:

http://www.mkaku.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2796

I am a member there, and mainly just read, but have posed a few questions, and am always intrigued by the discussion that follows...

Thanks for the link space, I'll definitely spend some time combing through those threads.

I have a question for whoever can answer it. What do you understand about the concept of particle spin? I know that it's the number of 'revolutions' a particle makes before it returns to the same state that it started at, but what does this mean in practical terms? I know that spin must be an analogy, after all we're not talking about billiard ball thinking at this scale. I also assume that the 'state' that the particle spins and returns to must also be a mathematical state more than anything, that is you perform certain calculations and then the value of 'spin' goes back to the original value. I also know that spin is a way of describing angular momentum, and that angular momentum is to do with vectors. All I personally know about vectors is a little of how they work in 3D programming.

Can anyone explain 'spin' to me some more in a practical sense?

I ask because the spin of the graviton seems to be a crucial point in understanding why it hypothetically exists. I also read in the thread you linked to space, that apparently Einstein posited the existence of the graviton with a mas of '0' and spin of '2', and yet he also said that gravity was not a force. No wonder there is confusion. Perhaps the confusion lies in the concept of what constitutes a 'particle'. People in the thread suggest that gravitons are more likely strings than particles, and string theory was after Einstein's time.

Another thing that makes me reconsider my thinking on space and gravity are some of the words of Nikola Tesla, who in my view was the greatest scientist ever to have lived on this planet. I put a great deal of stock in anything he had to say. He stated:
"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view."

After reading up on it.....NO I cannot explain it to you. Anyone else want to give it a go?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_s ... _particles

Sorry Deja, pulled the old 're-edit swifty' on you

Had some thoughts I wanted to jot down tonight that I came up with while watching baseball.

When the ball is being thrown to the batter, the batter can miss, deflect in multiple angles, yet in a very specific spot he can hit a major run. Likewise, perhaps time could be seen in this way. flowing in three dimensions, yet only collisions with fermions on a two dimensional plane create an annihilation event. Think of e=mc^2 and a=pi r^2. e=mc^2 can be reduced to e=m using universal units, and what is the only universal constant for distance? The speed of light. If time is antimatter flowing, it could be thought of as a gas trying to keep a state of equilibrium, or in a way repulsive. So this energy is equal to the area of the circle, or the mass. This explosion creates a two dimensional circle that would end up spinning somehow due to the disturbance, creating a spherical surface. These spinning two dimensional surfaces consume time, creating a 'lower pressure' of spacetime. To fill, time collapses inwards furthering the spin. It would make sense then if electrons were the flowing time pieces almost. Also think of the double slit experiment. If you shoot a two dimensional object, it would send out a wave, yet a point of shot and an observed detection elsewhere being known, it creates a known plane? Not sure, also, neutrons are not stable on their own and decay into radiation within 15 minutes. Perhaps the extra area on its own causes too low of a 'pressure' to develop creating a situation where the spin slows until in rests as a two dimensional area and is pushed by the flow of time, becoming radiation. Say when you burn something, some mass is turned into light, which shoots out as a wave, yet when our eye detects it it experiences the two dimensional path, the event, however, still continues outward as a wave until a detection collapses its two dimensional path. So in the double slit experiment, the event is a wave that has a starting shot point, and a detection point at our eye. Adding another detector narrows the event down two three dimensions, giving only one possible path to experience.

More rambling, but I like this better. What would magnets be then? Created by electrons...moving. I'm too tired, bah, wish I could take this further, seems kinda interesting. I'll have to think about it while I try to sleep . Someone tell me if this seems absurd.