[Kentl]

Originally Posted by Rainer.

I wanted you to summarize the paper in your own words, not just copy and paste sentences from the article.

Restating the article in your own words allows you to take ideas built over several sentences in the article and extract the main ideas. You need to take ideas stated over several paragraphs to answer these questions.

(understand that I'm not as interested in debating the existence of gravity with you as I am with making sure you can critically read and understand an article, much better life skill)



I posted only one sentence from the article because I want to focus this discussion onto the main idea of the article. This is best done by taking a particular point from the article and discussing its relation to the main idea of the paper not branching several discussions out over too many points.

And really, you are coming up with a faulty interpretation of the statements in the article, because you're not fully reading each of the statements that you are even copying into this discussion.

He says illusion, because he's saying that gravity is a physical effect of entropy. Much like magnetic repulsive force is a physical effect of charge:




Let's try this question, please answer it:

What does Erik Verlinde say that gravity is?

In your own words, please.

okay here is somethign for you to think about i think time is kind of like
collor

time if only a huamn thing not a real thing
like is life really collerd? or is it an illisuin that are eyes can see and others cant?

time is like collor
we see in collor
we are in our "time"
to a dog a red wire is not red
to a dog a seceond is not a seceond
time only exist for humans
the way i come to this it seems like other creatures dont relize time going by
they just deal with the hear and now not really the future and if they do its by ininct not the fact they know winter is coming

if you took a polar bear here in to teaxs whold it hibrnate?
if it was not in a cold place but in the heat off the day?
no becuse time dose not exist

it only there for humans kind of like collor for humans and black and write for dogs

[Rainer.]

Shawn, my post had absolutely nothing to do with time... you do realize this, yes?

[Kentl]

Originally Posted by Rainer.

Shawn, my post had absolutely nothing to do with time... you do realize this, yes?

To be honest it did not register in my brain


anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyy


i expslnd its saying it is like a ilisioun form
a mrigarge or a cold stomech

its not really that even tough you see\feel it
or like even collor (had to use it some how) it's "there" but its not either
for example a showdow is a reflecting of the light
is the shodow something?
no its just light reflecting off of you
its a side efect of something eles
pepole have iliusins where they get pushed down stairs or what not did they really get psuhed?
not always

ok this is probely a bit beter (i think)

[Rainer.]

Originally Posted by Kentl

To be honest it did not register in my brain


anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyy


i expslnd its saying it is like a ilisioun form
a mrigarge or a cold stomech

its not really that even tough you see\feel it
or like even collor (had to use it some how) it's "there" but its not either
for example a showdow is a reflecting of the light
is the shodow something?
no its just light reflecting off of you
its a side efect of something eles
pepole have iliusins where they get pushed down stairs or what not did they really get psuhed?
not always

ok this is probely a bit beter (i think)

But's your own personal analogies. What does the article/paper actually say?

Originally Posted by Me

Shawn, do you know anything about thermodynamics?

Originally Posted by You

yes I do know a good deal about it

You have yet to discuss the thermodynamic aspect of the paper. Which is a HUGE aspect of it.

[Wesley7777]

Shawn,
You have a misunderstanding of time. Time is measured in the SI units of seconds. They measure the second by a atomic clock.

Atomic clock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They are using frequency of the atoms to define a second. This second is always the same when you are in its frame of reference. That is the key, you have to understand the reference frame that the clock is sitting in. This is the idea of relativity that Einstien developed.

So if you are on earth and I am in a rocketship, lets just say the earth is stationary. I leave on a rocketship traveling extremely fast, .99c, time for me slows down relative to you. So that when i return to earth you will have aged more than I would have, your clock would be further ahead. But time on both earth and the rocketship was measured exactly the same and the atom's frequency would not have changed. Just proving that time is relative to where and who is measuring it. This does not mean time is not real, just relative.

You are trying to base time off the idea of how the earth rotates and its position around the sun. Physicist do not use days and years to measure time because it is relative to the earth. hope that helps.

[crazymoose]

I really think this article is an extreme oversimplification of this idea that "gravity does not exist". The most complex it got was just to say that gravity is just another expression of the laws of thermodynamics, it gave not an inkling as to how. This is the type of article that's designed to shock and awe people who don't have a deep understanding of physics, so that they can go around sounding smart by saying "Did you know that gravity doesn't exist?"

Gravity does exist. Newton proved that hundreds of years ago. Gravity is the tendency of objects with mass to accelerate towards each other, and that happens, therefore gravity does exist. All they're debating here is what the nature of gravity is. Is it a fundamental force or is it a culmination of other factors like the laws of thermodynamics? To say that "gravity does not exist" is just for shock value really. He used the example that a stock market is the culmination of a bunch of investors, but would you say that "the stock market does not exist" because of that fact? Not at all. Even with kentl's examples: colour "exists", not as matter, but as the reflection of photons with certain wavelengths within the visible spectrum by an object. A shadow is a lack of photons in the visible spectrum reflected by an object because those photons have been blocked by another object in between that object and the light source. If we said that something does not exist just because something is the product of something else, then we'd be left with a few small number of things that truly "exist". (quarks, electrons, and their respective antimatter, etc)

I know I'm not really arguing the validity of the argument but honestly, unless we find a better article that actually explains what the theory is rather than just simplifying it so that the average Joe can understand, there is no way we can argue whether this theory is valid or not. It would take years of training in physics for any of us to really understand what this guy's theory is. I don't think we're even at the point where we can summarize this. What thermodynamic laws is he talking about? Sure it's nice to say entropy a hundred times, but to me the article was very unclear as to what this actually meant. They went from talking about chaos and disorder to talking about most probable outcomes. Why is gravity so consistent according to Newton's equations then? Similar to the bad hair day example, there are infinitely more ways for gravity to be not 6.67*10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2) than there are for gravity to be 6.67*10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2). The article does nothing to explain why gravity should be so regular. There's just so much we do not understand here, I don't see how we can really argue this. It's intriguing, yes, but we just don't know enough at all.

[JerryLove]

Agreed: the gist of the article is "Gravity may be something other than an elemental force".

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Jerry, in a very real sense, how does this effect the theory of general relativity and standard physics view of space-time? Anything? Lean things towards string theory?

Reading several articles on it, I am a bit fuzzy on anything more than the basics.

[Rainer.]

Originally Posted by crazymoose

I know I'm not really arguing the validity of the argument but honestly, unless we find a better article that actually explains what the theory is rather than just simplifying it so that the average Joe can understand, there is no way we can argue whether this theory is valid or not. It would take years of training in physics for any of us to really understand what this guy's theory is. I don't think we're even at the point where we can summarize this. What thermodynamic laws is he talking about? Sure it's nice to say entropy a hundred times, but to me the article was very unclear as to what this actually meant. They went from talking about chaos and disorder to talking about most probable outcomes. Why is gravity so consistent according to Newton's equations then? Similar to the bad hair day example, there are infinitely more ways for gravity to be not 6.67*10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2) than there are for gravity to be 6.67*10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2). The article does nothing to explain why gravity should be so regular. There's just so much we do not understand here, I don't see how we can really argue this. It's intriguing, yes, but we just don't know enough at all.

If you're interested, the article does actually link to the paper in question. The introduction to Verlinde's actual paper has a relatively straightforward description of the premise of the paper, and only the middle pages have any sorts of extreme mathematical gymnastics.

[JerryLove]

Originally Posted by BillSPrestonEsq

Jerry, in a very real sense, how does this effect the theory of general relativity and standard physics view of space-time? Anything? Lean things towards string theory?

Reading several articles on it, I am a bit fuzzy on anything more than the basics.

I've got some of the same problems, and I truly do not know. Both are big groups of theories.

I *think* relativity doesn't address what gravity is: so would not care if it's a primary force of emergent phenomena. I believe several portions of string theory *might*. I know the measurement that gravity propagates at the speed of light was a "loss" for quantum theory.

[Wesley7777]

How would this affect the search for gravitational waves? Would this mean that they do not exist? I guess I should read the paper before asking this. I just know that gravitational waves are suppose to help to decide between the two theories of the beginning of time. The Big bang theory and the membrane theory. Gravitational waves will supposedly kill the membrane theory if I remember correctly.

[crazymoose]

Originally Posted by Wesley7777

How would this affect the search for gravitational waves? Would this mean that they do not exist? I guess I should read the paper before asking this. I just know that gravitational waves are suppose to help to decide between the two theories of the beginning of time. The Big bang theory and the membrane theory. Gravitational waves will supposedly kill the membrane theory if I remember correctly.

I've only just finished highschool physics so I'm only just starting to get into this kind of thing, but I believe yes, it would mean there is no such thing as a gravitational wave (I think it's actually called like an intermediary particle or something similar but I can't remember). Basically if gravity is not a fundamental force, then there would be no need for such particles or waves to propagate it along. The elusive "gravitron" would simply be a combination of other fundamentals acting together.

[JerryLove]

Originally Posted by crazymoose

I've only just finished highschool physics so I'm only just starting to get into this kind of thing, but I believe yes, it would mean there is no such thing as a gravitational wave (I think it's actually called like an intermediary particle or something similar but I can't remember). Basically if gravity is not a fundamental force, then there would be no need for such particles or waves to propagate it along. The elusive "gravitron" would simply be a combination of other fundamentals acting together.

I don't see how the loss of a graviton means the loss of gravitational waves. It would just mean that the hypothesis on how they work is wrong.

[tlj009]

Jerry, in a very real sense, how does this effect the theory of general relativity and standard physics view of space-time? Anything? Lean things towards string theory?

Reading several articles on it, I am a bit fuzzy on anything more than the basics.

The paper addresses this in the introduction.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...001.0785v1.pdf