[lbo-talk] Evolutionary theory/Gravitation

[andie nachgeborenen]

Gravity is not a force. That is the fundamental
negative result of GTR -- the elimination of the idea
of the "force" of gravitation posited by Newton, thus
the elimination of the problem of action at a distance
that so puzzled him.* Gravity is an effect of the
curvature of spacetime near massy objects.  It is an
consequence of geometry. Neither is it correct to say
that it in virtue of some occult force that
mass-energy "causes" spacetime to curve. That
presupposes tata spacetime is somehow naturally
Euclidean and that something must be posited to
expalin deviations from flatness.  This is an error.
S-T is locally Euclidean, which may be where the error
comes from.  It may be (but probbaly isn't) Euclidean
in on the large scale, but once you give up the idea
of Newtonian absolute space, fixed, immovable, the
same everywhere, it is no special mystery why the
presence of mass-energy would produce variations in
the shape of spacetime, and why it would produce the
precise highly preductable vatiations it does. No
occult powers are called for to account for this
unless you illegitimately import closet Newtonian
assumptions.  As noted by me and others, a unification
of GTR with qwuantum theory, which hopefully will give
us more ins ights into gravity, still eludes us.

* Action at a distance creeps back in quantum theory 
-- in a  context totally removed from gravitation --
via Bell's Theorem, but quantum is so fundamentally
bizarre and incomprehensible that there isn't much we
can do about that.

--- Matt <lbo3 at beyondzero.net> wrote:


> On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 08:12:27AM -0800, Chris Doss
> wrote:
> > 
> > --- Matt <lbo3 at beyondzero.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Yes, the dynamic nature of space-time and
> gravity as
> > > the manifestation
> > > of the curving effects of matter is the
> explanation
> > > of the "mechanism"
> > > as given by General Relativity.  It works very
> very
> > > well; in other
> > > words the mathematical predictions have been
> > > experimentally confirmed.
> > 
> > That's not a mechanism -- that's an improved
> > predictive model. The question is "why does matter
> > cause space to 'curve'?", i.e., "why is there
> > gravity?", "why does matter have this occult
> > property?" 
> > 
> > It has been 10 years since I read Einstein's
> > for-the-layman book on SR and GR, but if I
> recollect
> > correctly (a big if) no such explanation is given.
> 
> The answer to the question of why matter causes
> spame-time to curve is
> where we must look to new theories that will unify
> Quantum Mechanics -
> which models the behavior of the sub-atomic
> particles and the fields
> affecting those particles - and macroscopic theories
> like GR.  We have
> string theory; quantum units of gravity, such as a
> graviton; quantum
> loop gravity - attempting to model gravity as a
> fundamental force
> consistent with the other forces modeled by QM.
> 
> 
> Matt
> 
> -- 
> PGP RSA Key ID:    0x1F6A4471                     
> aim: beyondzero123
> PGP DH/DSS Key ID: 0xAFF35DF2                       
>   icq: 120941588
> http://blogdayafternoon.com                  yahoo
> msg: beyondzero123
> 
> Let me close by telling you what I hope to get out
> of the national
> dialogue that these committees are fostering.  I am
> not really
> helped by being reminded that I need more Arabic
> linguists or by
> someone second-guessing an obscure intercept sitting
> in our files
> that may make more sense today than it did two years
> ago.  What I
> really need you to do is to talk to your
> constituents and find out
> where the American people want that line between
> security and
> liberty to be.
>      -NSA Director Michael Hayden, statement before
> Congress
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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> 

	

		
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