Thread: No such thing as gravity?

I don't believe in the theory of gravity. Or rather, I have serious doubts. Now let me be clear: I know gravity as a phenomenon exists. That's plain. I simply have issues with the explanation. I don't believe gravity is a force. I don't think matter exerts a pull on other matter. And I have reasons.

First of all, Newton himself said the theory rested on an essential assumption: that all space is absolute. Does this really make sense? Not even in our limited experience. As pointed out in the book The Ascent of Man this is similar to primitive man's belief in a flat earth. The area nearby seemed flat so he assumed it was the same elsewhere. Yet it simply wasn't so. Not to mention Einstein showed that not many things are constant or fixed.

Secondly, recent observations in the cosmos seem to contradict our idea of gravity. Look at galaxies. According to scientists they're spinning much faster than they should be. There isn't enough matter in these galaxies and according to the theory of gravity should be tearing apart. Only they aren't. So scientists, rather than rethink anything, came up with dark matter. Only nobody knows what dark matter is, what it looks like. It's unable to reflect any type of light and other matter can pass through it with ease. Personally I think its a desperate and crude explanation.

So what do I think is the reason the Apple fell to the ground? Saddle points in space which allow mass to move in some directions easier than others. Which is why after the big bang matter coalesced like it did. It formed in these saddle points and still move along them. This explains the order of the universe.

Good job responding to a perceived ill-founded, assumption based conclusion jump with another.

Yep. The last bit of that is assumption based and roughly put together. But I stand by the fact that gravity is misunderstood and soon to be replaced by another theory.

Traces of 'dark matter' discovered 2,000 ft below the ground | Mail Online

How interesting.

Originally Posted by Mario92

Traces of 'dark matter' discovered 2,000 ft below the ground | Mail Online

How interesting.

Well, that article title is somewhat misleading, nothing has been proven yet. It could be dark matter...and it could be background noise.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

Well, that article title is somewhat misleading, nothing has been proven yet. It could be dark matter...and it could be background noise.

Well, but of course. Just saying, though, we might have something a bit more substantial than some crock theory put together by scientists at the last minute to make things work.

All science has uncertainties. Although it's true that the uncertainty there is very high.

I'm not really sure how you can test for the presence of dark matter... I guess you'd be looking for extra mass which doesn't effect the experiment in any other way.

I don't believe in the theory of gravity. Or rather, I have serious doubts. Now let me be clear: I know gravity as a phenomenon exists. That's plain. I simply have issues with the explanation. I don't believe gravity is a force. I don't think matter exerts a pull on other matter. And I have reasons.

It doesn't really make much sense to say gravity isn't a force. The idea of physical frameworks is that they should correspond to reality, and treating gravitation as a force leads to extremely accurate results. Whether the force exists or not is kind of academic.

First of all, Newton himself said the theory rested on an essential assumption: that all space is absolute. Does this really make sense? Not even in our limited experience. As pointed out in the book The Ascent of Man this is similar to primitive man's belief in a flat earth. The area nearby seemed flat so he assumed it was the same elsewhere. Yet it simply wasn't so. Not to mention Einstein showed that not many things are constant or fixed.

You're very behind on physics, and your understanding of Einstein's work is so superficial that it crosses the line of what is correct. Newton's theory is 300 years old now; it marked the birth of physics, not the conclusion.

Einstein's discoveries were not vague statements of 'stuff is relative' (which many anti-scientists ridiculously claim also imply moral relativity or a denial of absolute truth, etc.); they were precise mathematically formulated ideas, which were in fact directly about what you're discussing. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity essentially explained gravitational fields, saying that the force, rather than being caused directly by the mass of the objects, was caused by the mass of the objects warping spacetime.

Secondly, recent observations in the cosmos seem to contradict our idea of gravity. Look at galaxies. According to scientists they're spinning much faster than they should be. There isn't enough matter in these galaxies and according to the theory of gravity should be tearing apart. Only they aren't. So scientists, rather than rethink anything, came up with dark matter. Only nobody knows what dark matter is, what it looks like. It's unable to reflect any type of light and other matter can pass through it with ease. Personally I think its a desperate and crude explanation.

The thing is, Newton's theory of gravitation, and even more so Einstein's modifications, have been tested experimentally, and they're extremely accurate on a local scale. Dark matter is only really a moniker for a lack of understanding; physics is a work in progress. It's possible that gravity might limit to our current laws in some kind of circumstance, but it seems a lot more likely that there are just a large number of massive particles out there which aren't charged. We've discovered all sorts of strange particles; the neutrino for instance, which has a tiny mass and no charge.

So what do I think is the reason the Apple fell to the ground? Saddle points in space which allow mass to move in some directions easier than others. Which is why after the big bang matter coalesced like it did. It formed in these saddle points and still move along them. This explains the order of the universe.

General relativity says that mass forms 'saddle points' as such.

Your idea doesn't really make much sense. Newton showed that, with the extremely simple rule of a gravitational force proportional to the masses of the bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the separation, you can completely predict all of the orbiting behaviours seen in space, including the elliptical trajectories of planets.

It seems quite strange that these saddle points would happen to form the ellipses which are much better explained by a single, simple rule for gravitation, with experimental verification.

Also, I think your idea is totally incompatible with the fact that the velocity of an orbiting body at a certain radius is completely determined by its mass (experimentally verified).

Why would exactly the right amount of mass happen to fall into the correct ellipse?

Think about this. Language provides names. Names are manipulated in accordance with that which is named.

When you say space is absolute, you have said that the relative is absolute. The container is the contained. Naturally that is mad.

One of the reasons it was written that the wisdom of the wise shall perish is because man has not yet understood language from it's inception. Change the foundation, all else collapses.

The more perceptive of linguistic inconsistencies you become aware of, the greater is the urge to get to the bottom of it all. It amounts to realizing that man does not understand language.

Learn the Theory of the Absolute, and the Theory of Relativity, but not as Einstein wrote it, god no, but as Euclid started.

Again: it's not a crock theory. It's an observation.

Originally Posted by Xei

Again: it's not a crock theory. It's an observation.

Exactly. That comment was directed at the OP.

One of the obvious signs that the basic Newtonian system wasn't sufficient was the orbit of Mercury. Rather than being a pretty stable orbit, it moves around kind of like a spirograph. Einstein's theory of general relativity actually accounts for that, but for it to work, there MUST be such a thing as "gravitational waves" - the source of the "force" known as gravity. Basically, as the theory goes (cause it's still a theory), when two LARGE masses spin around each other, it generates "gravitational waves," which can be thought of as longitudinal waves that compress space itself.

Now, in the case of electromagnetic waves, it was fairly easy to build a generator and a receiver to prove that they exist and are measurable. Unfortunately, to build a gravitational wave generator, they've calculated that the two large masses need to be about the mass of the sun, and they need to spin around each other at almost the speed of light.

However, there is INDIRECT proof, in the form of data collected over 30 or so years on two black holes or neutron stars (not sure which) orbiting around each other. The theory that assumes there are gravitational waves predicts with uncanny accuracy the behaviour of these two large masses (which the basic newtonian theory does not).

There are currently several observatories in the world built for the purpose of measuring these waves. Unfortunately, the waves are ridiculously weak and very hard to measure. The one facility I visited (LIGO in eastern washington) has a probability of maybe 1/30 each year of finding something. However, with the upgrades and new instruments they're building in over the next 5 years or so, they expect to be able to measure about 50 events in a year.

Here's more info on how one would attempt to measure something as subtle as ripples in time and space, see here: LIGO Overview

Newton was debunked 70 years ago, you're way way way behind the times. Read up on a guy named Albert Einstien. He proved that gravity is a bending of space and time.

More like 100 years ago... unless maybe you're talking about some kind of empirical evidence, though I don't see how that'd work either as GR's explanation of Mercury's idiosyncrasy is still the most convincing and that was evidence available at the time.

I'd take issue with the idea of 'debunking Newton', even if it is a bit pedantic. Obviously Newton was a genius who also invented calculus and dynamics and hence the whole of applied mathematics and the birth of physics and hence pretty much all of science and hence modern civilization, but with respects to gravitation, Newton's proposal of a force proportional to mass and the inverse of the square of separation, is still used for virtually every circumstance today. It can effectively be seen as a limiting case of GR, in which case it is completely valid. GR is extremely unwieldy and it's extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with pretty basic situations using it. General relativity is just that; a generalisation. But we all know that general relativity is not the complete picture either, and is just as prone to being just as totally wrong as Newtonian gravitation in various circumstances. They're both just models, and models are never debunked. We discover limits, but they don't lose their usefulness.

I don't consider relativity to be valid until there is evidence. For 30 years it was entirely theory until a solar eclipse proved it. In fact, for 15 years, what Einstein had published had been wrong, he went back and revised it when he realized it.

I didn't mean any disrespect to Sir Isaac Newton, he laid the pavement, but he didn't finish it. When someone finishes Einstein's work I'll say that he was debunked to. Everyone knows who knows the first thing about theoretical physics knows that Einstein wasn't right either, his theories were just more complete than Newton's.

The evidence for GR was Mercury's orbit which Einstein showed was consistent with GR, unlike Newtonian dynamics; that's still the most potent evidence. The experiment with the eclipse was only 4 years later. How was what Einstein published wrong? He added the cosmological constant afterwards and of course later removed that, but I don't know of the main theory being wrong...

Like I say, neither theory is any more debunked than the other, really. There's currently nothing to replace GR, but that doesn't make it any more or less 'debunked' that classical gravitation; we already have the evidence that it is incomplete.

You are correct. Gravity or its explanation is flawed. Gravity can only be explained in terms that it is a pushing force from without instead of a pulling force from within. All matter within the universe exhibits a pushing or repulsive force. When two objects approach one another they act as shields, blocking this repulsive force. Since the repulsive or pushing force has been blocked by the two objects there is less repulsive force between th eobjects and they move in the direction of least repulsive force.

What is your evidence that gravity can't be described as a 'pulling force'?

What is your empirical evidence that your explanation is correct?

My empiracal evidence is the rotational speeds of stars within galaxies. And quite frankly the pulling force or rather Einsteins's and Newton's models don't make sense. Actually Einstein's model does make sense when examined from a different perspective. We've all seen the curving fabric model when used to explain the gravity of mass. The heavier the mass the more the fabric curves. Well if you picture a person riding a bicycle on this curved fabric orbiting a large mass. The model suggests that the fabric is either pulling the bicycle towards the large mass or it is pushing the bicycle. Since the fabric is doing the work it can be explained that either space is curved or there exists a force from withou pushong the bicycle towards the large mass.

Originally Posted by ericcc123

My empiracal evidence is the rotational speeds of stars within galaxies.

This is just a statement, it's not an argument.

And quite frankly the pulling force or rather Einsteins's and Newton's models don't make sense.

Yyyes you already said this, the question is why not?

General relativity doesn't even involve a pulling force in the first place. It doesn't involve a force at all...

Since space, according to my definition, has no properties similar to mass and energy, space cannot be doing the work. Empty space does not contain mass nor energy and therefore the equation E=mc2 is not valid in describing the forces of empty space. So either E=mc2 is incorrect or its correct. Unless it is proven that empty space contains mass or energy, space cannot be doing the work.

I cant put up a computer simulation of the rotational speeds of galaxies in this thread. But if I could you would see that the orbits of stars towards the edges of galaxies would rotate just as fast as the stars towards the center because the force is from without the galaxy. There would be an increase in pushing force towards the edges and it would decrease in magnitude the farther inward towards the center. Therefore there is less force keeping the stars orbiting the galaxy towards the center and more force towards the edges. This is caused by the fact that matter absorbs this repulsive force, so by the time you calculated this force towards the center it would have been diminished by the absorption from all the matter towards the edges.

Im sorry to say that objects DO obey Newton's laws of motion. In other words, an object in motion will stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

Do you have any formal physics education? Have you ever actually studied general relativity? I'm not asking if you've read some pop sci books about it, I'm asking if you've looked at the mathematics. Do you know what differential geometry is? Could you do some calculations involving differential geometry?

I consider it a blessing and a curse that I have never had any formal physics education past high school. However, after my breakthrough and after 20 or so years of dabbling in cosmology and astrophysics I really do think that I could further my theory with some formal ecucation. Unfortunately, I think after listening to professors and after reading those, in my opinion, erronious text books that I would have to "bite my tounge" in a few situations. But that shouldn't detract from the validity of my arguement. Its just that I dont have the ability to prove it in mathmatical terms yet.

Originally Posted by Xei

This is just a statement, it's not an argument.

That is what this whole thread, the quest to find dark matter and dark energy, and ultimately the undoing and revision of physics as we know it today is about. This statement/arguement will not only determine the fate of the legacies of Newton and Einstein but will determine the discovery of the grand unification theory. The theory of everything. Which physics has been plagued with problems from the get go. Physics is seriously flawed and untill they recognize and admit this today's understanding of physics one day will be remembered as being as flat as the earth was.

Originally Posted by ericcc123

However, after my breakthrough and after 20 or so years of dabbling in cosmology and astrophysics I really do think that I could further my theory with some formal education. Unfortunately, I think after listening to professors and after reading those, in my opinion, erronious text books that I would have to "bite my tounge" in a few situations. Physics is seriously flawed and until they recognize and admit this today's understanding of physics one day will be remembered as being as flat as the earth was.

1. Your professors? If you have not had any formal education in science beyond high school, then who are "your professors"?
2. Biting your tongue is often the wisest thing to do. You're very confident that you know the answer to this but you haven't taken the time to listen to the whole question. You should show a more humble approach to formal education, rather than an "It's not worth my time" attitude.

Originally Posted by Replicon

One of the obvious signs that the basic Newtonian system wasn't sufficient was the orbit of Mercury. Rather than being a pretty stable orbit, it moves around kind of like a spirograph. Einstein's theory of general relativity actually accounts for that, but for it to work, there MUST be such a thing as "gravitational waves" - the source of the "force" known as gravity. Basically, as the theory goes (cause it's still a theory), when two LARGE masses spin around each other, it generates "gravitational waves," which can be thought of as longitudinal waves that compress space itself.

Now, in the case of electromagnetic waves, it was fairly easy to build a generator and a receiver to prove that they exist and are measurable. Unfortunately, to build a gravitational wave generator, they've calculated that the two large masses need to be about the mass of the sun, and they need to spin around each other at almost the speed of light.

However, there is INDIRECT proof, in the form of data collected over 30 or so years on two black holes or neutron stars (not sure which) orbiting around each other. The theory that assumes there are gravitational waves predicts with uncanny accuracy the behaviour of these two large masses (which the basic newtonian theory does not).

There are currently several observatories in the world built for the purpose of measuring these waves. Unfortunately, the waves are ridiculously weak and very hard to measure. The one facility I visited (LIGO in eastern washington) has a probability of maybe 1/30 each year of finding something. However, with the upgrades and new instruments they're building in over the next 5 years or so, they expect to be able to measure about 50 events in a year.

Here's more info on how one would attempt to measure something as subtle as ripples in time and space, see here: LIGO Overview

Tadaaa: http://www.dreamviews.com/science-ma...nal-waves.html
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