for over half of my life,i had never got a clear answer to how gravity is generated. perhaps i did get an answer at some point, but it did’nt stick.
i was confused that earth spins,pulling things toward itself, while centrifical force throws things away from itself.
?
I’m a biological scientist, so physics is the bane of my existence (like the Dao of Pooh is to a Daoist.) . . . but, centerfugal force is a false force, it doesn’t exist. Centriptal force, which pushes things towards the center is the real force, otherwise it is angular velocity.
That said, my (limited) understanding of gravity is that it is caused by a distortion of spacetime
In short,
No one really knows for sure. Einstein’s theory seems to have alot of holes.
i biologist? exellent! i consider myself fasinated by biology and genetics,minus the plaques.
i was thinking strictly of 2 things* 1)a merry go around. kids feel themselves being pulled off right? so they hold on?
2)and what about giving someone a pukey?(mario grabs bowser by the tail and spins him around,thus destroying your N64 joystick, but more importantly,when he releases bowser,he is hurled farther the faster the spinning.)
*centerifically
Once again, not too sure on it but this website explained it as I remember it: hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/corf.html
Centrifugal force is a fake force that results from an improper frame of reference.
k, i did’nt read it all,but the jist of this is centrifical force is not a myth or fake,just that there is an additional force also called Coriolis Force that works with it,right?
“centerfugal force is a false force”
Get a rope swing. Twist the rope as much as you can,… then get on. Lay out flat,… then curl inward toward the motion. The more you curl inward the faster you will spin. This isn’t explained by air resistance. It almost feels like your muscular strength is reinforced when doing this.
Gravity could be the combined force of all the atoms so close together. The pull of one atom toward another reaches further then the closest atom, and doubles more the closer atoms are to each other…
An energy is created when another energy is reflected through a perpendicular resistance. To trace gravity backwards to the atom,… perpendicularly we see?
string theory???
well the interesting thing is that according to einstein there is no more a force of gravity than there is a centrifugal force. According to newton, gravity is a force that acts at a distance and pulls you towards another mass. He wasnt very happy about the action at a distance thing but there was according to newton clearly a force.
As far as the centrifugal force is concerned, it is an illusion according to newtonian mechanics. It feels like a force pulling you AWAY from the centre of the rotation, but according to mechanics it is actually a force pulling you towards the center of rotation and away from the trajectory you would take if you let go.
The interesting thing about einsteins theory of general relativity is that it does the same for gravity. It feels like we are being pulled towards the earth, but according to einstein there is no force pulling you down, there is a force pushing you up, and away from the trajectory you would follow if the ground was not there to stop you.
Einstien rewrote the geodesic. According to newton if you let go of the merry go round, then the forces upon you cease and you follow a geodesic, which in that scheme of things is a straight line. But einstien claimed that if you are also in free fall (eg an orbit) then there is no force acting upon you, therefore a geodesic can be a parabolic/elliptical trajectory when around a large mass.
This leads to a big difference re orbitting the earth. According to newton you should feel the illusion of a centrifugal force as the earth pulls you around itself and away from a straight line. But according to einstien you should feel nothing at all because you are free to follow a geodesic which under these circumstances is not a straight line.
So a force diverts you from a geodesic. Thus the centripedal force diverts you from a geodesic where you would fly away from the center of rotation, and the ground forces you to remain ‘still’ and away from the geodesic that would accelerate to the center of the earth.
If you lie on the ground face up, close your eyes, then you can more easily realise that you are actually being pushed upwards and not pulled downwards. The reason you have to close you eyes is that if we are being pushed away from something … … then like newton we expect to move away from where we got pushed.
ok so here goes with some fruity stuff from my own head 
If we go back and ask newton, “what causes us to move in a straight line” he would say an initial force. “what keeps us going in a straight line?” he would say inertia. Now inertia is not an one off event like the initial force, it is more like a characteristic that is conserved. Hence we have the law of the conservation of momentum. In that sense inertia is not a cause like in a cause and effect chain. We have stillness plus cause (force) results in effect (motion in a straight line). There is no cause to the maintenance of that straight line motion, only cause that makes it happen and later maybe make it change. In between the effect is conserved.
Now that kind of seems ok reasoning, cos somehow motion in a straight line doesn’t seem like much. (i should also add that that motion is also of constant velocity. My apologies please add to the above previous statements)
But what if we ask einstien “what causes us to follow a geodesic?” Remember this is the newtonian equivalent of fixed motion in a straight line. He can respond that our mass and the masses near us cause us to do this, just as newton would say that the force of gravity is intrinsically linked to the masses. But hang on a minute. Our masses dont just suddenly switch on, like the event of an application of a FORCE. (an objection that is valid under newton too). Pushing further “what keeps us following a geodesic?” now this is much trickier than in the newtoniain situation. There we could say it is the conservation of an effect that has happened, or put another way a characteristic of the object. But with general relativity we cant divorce the geodesic from the other masses. In other words an object following a geodesic is now not in an independent state. With newton it was. In fact constant motion in a straight line could be defined as a measure of an objects independence. Under einstien constant motion in a straight line is just one of many possible geodesics. In fact constant motion in a straight line near a massive body is indication under einstien that it is NOT following a geodesic, whereas under newton it is always the case that such motion has zero net force acting upon a body, and is therefore independent of the environment.
So all this now completely challenges the cause effect chain of reasoning. Ironically in losing the force of gravity, we have also destroyed an objects independence … and therefore any sense of unique intrinsic value. ie general relativity is holistic.
Holism doesnt conform to deterministic reasoning by cause and effect. In fact it undermines it.
What causes gravity?
i know exactly what causes the force of gravity. click right here to find out
lights i like how you tied inertia into the idea. i thought up this theory after reading about what some scientists said about inertia and its cause. they seem to have discovered that the zero point field is responsible for holding solid objects in one piece and conserving their momentum.
the zero point field is a dense sea of messenger particles (photons, gluons etc) that fly around every little bit of space. im pretty sure the basic idea behind the scientists findings is that objects are being uniformly bombarded on all sides by this force-carrying radiation. an object sits still instead of wafting away in all directions like a gas because it is being held together by an all-encompassing external force. this same force holds it still, and i think some crazy, unintuitive thing about the constant speed of light relative to all observers also translates this idea into constant motion for the same reason.
i read a paper written about this explanation of inertia. they did not translate the idea over to gravity, even though the connection seems obvious to me. it was probably just too complicated and they wanted to take it step by step. the obvious connection is that when you have two objects near eachother, and they are being bombarded from the outside, and they have inertia because of the fact that they absorb the force of the nearby zpf, then each object will block the zpf particles from hitting its neighbor, causing the force to decrease on the side facing its neighbor.
imagine one ball floating in the middle of a sphere, and the inner surface of the sphere is covered in light bulbs. the light pushes that ball on all sides and holds it directly in the center of the sphere. then put another ball in there. if the light is what holds that one ball steady, the shadow cast by the other ball will decrease this uniform force, and the side that doesnt have a shadow cast on it will continue at the regular force. the weaker, shadow side will give way to the stronger, non-shadowed side and the balls will move in the direction of the shadow that is cast on them: towards eachother.
its either this or graviton grappling hooks that have no rest mass, unlike anything else, ever. my theory actually does have a massless wave that travels outward at the speed of light if you were to suddenly create mass. but its not a massless particle which seems to make no sense, its a sudden lack of zpf particles travelling out from the object. this may be due to the fact that that object deflected those zpf particles elsewhere, perhaps trapping them inside itself temporarily, maybe using the energy of those particles to fuel the orbits of the electrons of all the atoms (it has been recently discovered that without constant refueling, electrons will be sucked into their nuclei rather quickly).
the scientific proven answer that isnt my speculation that cant be proven until we find a way to measure the zpf on large scales (which may take a thousand years) is that nobody knows what causes gravity, or what causes the space time fabric to curve. newton and einstein merely found accurate ways to measure what they saw. they dont know what causes it.
i really havent been convinced that shadow gravity isnt exactly the answer in every way. its so perfectly intuitive, and solves other, unrelated problems. it just cant be proven because you have to look at the zero point field on the scale of planets. we cant even look at this thing with microscopes, but in order to see what im talking about, we would need a huge thing out in space to measure the large scale changes in density near massive objects.
as for the centrifugal force, i remember hearing a physics teacher repeatedly tell us that its actually some other force. i think its as simple as saying that the outward force you feel when spinning is not actually pushing you away from the center, its pushing you in a straight line from wherever you are. if you are spinning clockwise and are at 3 oclock, the rope that you are holding on to as you spin around is actually pushing you straight down, not straight to the right. if you let go, you would not go to the right, you would go down. it seems like you would go to the right, away from the center, simply because as you hold on to the rope, it feels like you are being sucked outward. but its not outward away from the center, its constantly changing direction as you change direction. down when youre at 3 oclock, up when at 9, right when at 12 etc. i dont know that this is right, actually.
hi future man
yes the shadow theory for gravity has been around in various forms for many decades, and i agree it does solve the action at a distance problem. However, there are problems with it, not least what determines how dark the shadow is. It would appear from that model for instance that at a certain density or overall mass, that the shadow is completely dark on one side? Thus gravity hits a maximum value ( & what of black holes?) But the maths is intriguing because it does approximate to the inverse square law like general relativity.
The shadowing effect incidentally distinguishes gravity from the other forces. It is tempting to say for example that the electric force also distorts space time and is not due to massless (and virtual!) particles flying about. But the problem lies in the fact that we can easily screen out electricity and magnetism with appropriate materials in between say two charged particles. With gravity we cannot screen it out.
It does however intrigue me that scientists are nevertheless searching for the gravitron. Presumably they reject the purely geometric holistic interpretation of general relativity in search for an algebraic one? I see this beautiful and mysterious polarity in pure mathematics (algebra/geometry) as fundamental in this field. I mean i am aware that information cannot travel faster than light within the theory of relativity, therefore spacetime curvatures (geodesics) are subject to waves when the masses jiggle about some. But the search for an algebraic interpretation seems to me to be an attempt to get back to discrete independent entities (like charge) and more importantly the subsequent application of cause/effect type explanations. Which is of course a very useful thing to do… but there appears to be an intrinsic philosophical dissatifaction with holism behind it.
Having said that of course such an attitude has pushed forward the boundaries of science time and again. There does seem however to be indications that when it comes to marrying the very large with the very small physics, that the theories have been forced to consider such smaller and smaller entities (now strings) that they are getting beyond even theoretical scientific verification.
yeah i wonder about how the force ought to be calculated by some combination of the density of the object as well as the surface area of the side facing the recipient object. a black hole or neutron star has no or virtually no surface area, so it seems like, if it were a normal shadow, light would creep in from the sides and weaken the intensity and force of the shadow.
perhaps when the black or neutron star interacts with the zpf, it absorbs a ton more than would be by normal atomic matter, and this extra absorption causes a vacuum. the ambient pressure of the zpf decreases in that area and causes the deflection of zpf particles that are floating nearby that would not have interacted with the matter under normal density circumstances. the fact that the matter is so dense causes the surface area of the ‘ball’ that blocks the zpf to actually become larger than the ball of matter is due to the fact that it is ‘sucking’ particles due to the fact that it absorbs so much more than usual.
maybe zpf particles are sucked into orbit around these objects!! and there is an invisible halo of zpf particles that acts like a shield, creating that larger surface area that is required to cast a distant shadow.
i dont see the problem with that. wouldnt an object containing enough mass to hit this threshold collapse into a black hole? and if its not specifically a star ready to collapse, isnt it some theoretical object that will never exist?
i thought the other three forces were clearly communicated by way of energetic messenger particles? the same particles that make up the zpf?
i think the reason why we cant screen out gravity is because it is purely a product of these three other forces on large scales. scientists think the reason why we cant see gravitons is because they are 10^-40 weaker than the others. if the other three forces are essentially the same at a certain, high temperature (unification energy), and the force of gravity is still 10^40 times smaller than the others, i think that means that they are fundamentally different in every way.
im philosophically dissatisfied with holism because it always sounds like magic and never actually explains anything? i think shadow gravity can totally be explained by listing all of the quadrillions of discrete independent zpf interactions with matter atoms. i think it would be inefficient to do it that way, however, and a more holistic, geometric approch is necessary to accept the idea. but once its accepted, i dont think proof can even exist without a quantum, discrete, cause and effect analysis. “what caused that?”
as for string theory i say bah! i read the elegant universe and it would appear that the entire idea is unecessary and sheds new light on nothing at all. its like physicists are struggling their hardest to learn more things with their extremely expensive Standard model, even though they already catalogued everything. there are, however, many instances where someone who is intoxicated would be inclined to say “like oh whoa man”
"i dont think proof can even exist without a quantum, discrete, cause and effect analysis. “what caused that?”
yes that is what i am driving at. The desire for proof, or put another way explanation by cause effect has a tendenct to strongly reject the geometric for the algebraic. But general relativity is an inclusion of mass and energy with the geometry of space time. We can always go for algebraic descriptions for geometric shapes of course, such as x^2 + Y^2 = R, and from that inject cause effect chains by playing with the variables. But gravity according to einstien IS intrinsically space time. There is no Force of gravity.
“i thought the other three forces were clearly communicated by way of energetic messenger particles?”
yes thats the point and the fundamental difference with gravity. Any messenger particle for GR will have to include space time itself whereas for the other forces they travel through space time. Of course a possible way out of the dilemma is to invent more dimensions so that gravity/4D spacetime aint too special, hence string theory. But as you note yourself string theory still has a lot of philosophical holes in it.
I will add that i have spoken to mathematicians and scientists who say that general relativity, wonderful as it is, is open to many variations. One characteristic of GR is that it promotes a ‘block’ universe in space time, and this fixedness in space time contradicts the probability waves of QM. Or at least it renders them as an illusion to whatever ‘now’ is to a measuring lifeform in that block. Hence einstiens famous remark, “god does not play dice”.
Incidentally the concept of a universal ‘now’ has no meaning in GR, since simultaneity is relative to each and every individual observer.
while i know none of the math, only the mainstream paperback version, i find it easy to believe that when einstein says “fabric of space-time” he really means the zero point field. did he know that it existed at the time?
there is no Force of gravity like there is an electro-strongo-weak force. the universal fabric containing those forces happens to produce a large scale phenomena called gravity, which closely resembles those other forces (that one Force).
piece of cake. you have a magical cube whos mass you can turn on and off with a switch. turn it on so that it exists to the right of the moon. at the second it comes into existence, a bunch of zpf particles that were travelling to the left that were about to hit the moon bounce off of the cube and go elsewhere. at the second it comes into existence, immediately to the left of the cube, a bunch of zpf particles continue to travel to the left, to the moon, as they already were going to.
but right behind them is an open space where a bunch of zpf particles would be, except they bounced away when the cube came into existence. it looks like a wave traveling at the speed of light that has no mass and is a part of the fabric of space time. isnt that awesome?!
im not sure what you mean when you say block universe, but i like the idea of getting rid of those stupid probability waves
well future man i havent studied in detail the zpf particle theory. I have confined myself to my own limited understanding of GR.
WRT block universe theories. They are widely expounded and for example in the big bang big crunch version forms a kind of 4D supersphere that contains all the events that have and will ever happen. Sometimes they are redefined as phase spaces which is a clever mathematical trick used for capturing possible event combinations. These models arise because ‘now’, as say a frontier to the expanding universe, has no meaning in general relativity. It is geometric on the one hand (where time is one of the four dimensions of course) and the particular characteristics of the geometry is such that universal simultaneity cannot exist. A universal ‘now’ requires a universal simultaneity to define it.
Thus ‘now’ is an illusion. We are not as we may think and feel at the frontiers of history according to GR. eg looking up at a star 400 light years away. Are we seeing it as it is now? Well no because what we can know and see is necessarily 400 years behind. But the same applies to to a life form around that star looking at us. Now consider another star 400 light years away from the second in its opposite direction. Life on the ‘middle’ star could at least imagine that there is a simultaneous set of events going on here and there as compared to itself, (even though it cannot make any comparison of any kind for 400 years.) BUT the second star is 800 light years from us. So we already have a problem because the light we see that star with has already taken the extra 400 years to get to us.
Now we might still be able to make the same comparisons through agreeing various starting points of the comparisons… as long as none of us move wrt each other. But generally there is movement and that buggers it up completely, because simultaneity in GR is not conserved with velocity. We can agree on the order of events whose cause effect relationship is less than or equal to the speed of light (that is conserved in GR), but we cannot agree what events are now… or were now, because a universal now requires an agreed simultaneity. Therefore now does not exist … except as an illusion within a predetermined block universe. God does not play dice.
This of course is another variation on what i spoke of earlier. In getting rid of the force of gravity we annihilate a masses independence. That is, independence in time as well as space. General relativity is holistic because it is geometric.
attract and repell. Would gasses repell infinatly in the void of space? Would masses attraction have infaniate reach?
They draw gravity as a force that seems to lessen by the same rule as measuring volume,… Double the size and quadruple the volume. IE the strength of gravity lessens by quadruple for the distance it reaches. It is a force that evenly disapates,… but probably extends forever.
Now according to protons/ neutrons, an atoms is gass or solid,… also according to pressure/heat. Yet atoms will never have enough attraction as to eliminate the void inbetween them. Unless there is so much pressure that maybe atoms cannot even form. The attract is oviously the stronger force,… untill they reach a certain distance.
If centrifugal/centripedal force were the cause, you’d see the same effect that galaxies and solar systems have after they even out. They are flat. So sting theories would mean that they are wrapped around in every dirrection,… otherwize they would all become in sycronis of eachother.
Well my understaing was that centrifical fource, yet defing gravity, was not gravity. centrofuges make light objects seperate from dense objects but that isn’t an act of gravity is it? in fact centrifical fource can only work if there is gravty present, what would happen if you spun a cetrifuse in space were there is little gravity?
Hi Guy6870,
Centrifugal force will still be present without the action of gravity. I will give an explanation of this that I find to be intriguing. When you accelerate in a given direction, you will experience a retarding force in a direction opposite to your acceleration. Now consider an object in circular motion in two-dimensions. While the object’s angular velocity may be constant, at each instance, the object’s velocity is changing in each of the two-dimensions i.e. the definition of acceleration. Therefore, the object will feel a force from this acceleration, which is the origin of centrifugal force.
well either i am very tired or my question has been miss understood. I am not douting the centrifical fource, but rather it’s classifycation(totaly butcherd that word) as gravity. In the example given, it relies on acleration(5gh/7 if i am not mistakin) and total volicaty(square of 10gh/7) in both equations, gravity is used as a constant. so if gravity is equal to zero the whole equation is zero. is there another formula to use in the case of centrifical fource? I am just a simple student, i have not even had physics yet i don’t know these things.