On 12/23/05, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
> http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>