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Spoiler alert: be ready for the revelation that:
Gravitation, as an effect in its own right, doesn’t exist.
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General Relativity tells us that gravitation is an effect produced by curvature of spacetime. This is a very helpful model, giving an excellent mathematical basis for calculation of trajectories at all levels - of spacecraft, planets and other astronomical bodies, even light itself. It offers a very precise description of the effects of gravity.
It doesn’t, though, offer any explanation of the underlying cause of those effects. The proposal that curvature of spacetime is the cause then immediately begs the two questions:
(a) What exactly does that mean, in real terms?
and
(b) How exactly is this curvature itself caused?
The spun-light understanding of matter answers both of these questions, down to the last detail. It shows, very graphically, how the energetic structure of material particles effectively creates contours in the fabric of spacetime which in turn determine the paths taken by material objects. From the individual hydrogen atoms that are drawn together to form stars, to stars themselves and even whole galaxies that are drawn together to form clusters and superclusters, the energetic content of every tiniest subatomic particle is responsible for shaping the cosmos at every level and re-shaping it dynamically in every instant. [See details of my peer-reviewed paper on this subject, Cosmic System Dynamics - an invited paper in a leading systems science journal.]
So how might those contours, that curvature of spacetime, be manifested in physical terms? What could it be about the substance of the space-time continuum that gives material objects, and light, the impetus to travel in directions other than dead straight lines? Indeed, what is it that gives those objects the impetus to move at all - like that apple falling from the tree - rather than simply remaining where they are? And what is it about those objects, particularly large ones like planets and stars, that creates those contours in spacetime? How is it that, in the words of noted physicist John Wheeler: “Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve”?
The spun-light description of matter provides a comprehensive and consistent explanation for every aspect of these effects. Just read on.
How much…? How many…? How the heck…??
When we’re looking for answers, the best place to start is with a few questions. So let’s look at a few of the puzzling features of gravitation - the questions that are most often asked about this weakest, yet most powerful, of cosmic forces.
Why is gravitation so much weaker than all of the other forces in nature: a trillion trillion trillion times weaker than electrostatic or magnetic forces, for example?
Why is gravitation always attractive, never repelling – unlike static electricity or magnetism?
Why does gravitation affect all physical objects – unlike static electricity or magnetism?
Why is the gravitational effect on any object proportional to its (inertial) mass – unlike static electricity or magnetism?
There are a number of clues in here, particularly if we have in mind the spun-light structure of matter. In particular that last point tells us that every bit of the spun-light energy in an object has a part to play in this mysterious effect of gravitation.
One thing that stands out here is that there are various contrasts between gravitational effects and electrostatic/magnetic effects. We already know quite a bit about those last two (don’t we?) and we also know that magnetism is just electric charge on the move – so maybe a good way in is to take a look at electric charge.
What’s the charge?
Some particles, like the protons that form part or all of an atom’s nucleus, carry a positive electric charge. Others, like the electrons that orbit that nucleus, carry a negative charge. Yet others still, such as the neutrons also found in the atomic nuclei of most types of atoms, carry no charge at all.
Interestingly, although the mass of a proton is around two thousand times the mass of an electron, the charges on those two particles are equal and opposite. This means that a hydrogen atom, which contains one of each, is electrically neutral.
In the same way, every other atom has the same number of protons in its nucleus as the number of electrons orbiting that nucleus, making every complete atom electrically neutral. That’s still true when we add in the neutrons included in many atomic nuclei, each weighing about the same as a proton, each carrying zero net charge.
So every (positively charged) atomic nucleus carries thousands of times the mass of its (negatively charged) orbiting electrons, but every complete atom carries a net charge of zero.
Is that ‘net charge’ the only thing that counts, though? Certainly it’s the overriding consideration in electrostatic effects, and in magnetic effects if a charged particle is on the move.
But consider for a moment a country that contains equal numbers of left-wing and right-wing supporters: it’s true to say that such a country doesn’t have a majority in one direction or the other – but it doesn’t in any way give the full picture to simply say that it’s ‘politically neutral’.
What if, for example, there’s a particular issue that’s close to the hearts of left-wing supporters but not of so much importance to right-wingers? It’s quite possible that on that issue the left-wingers will win the day, despite that country’s ‘political neutrality’.
Or if right-wingers are by their nature more effective public speakers than left-wingers: then it could well be that the right-wing view carries the public vote more often than the left-wing view, regardless of that apparent ‘neutrality’.
Maybe ‘neutral’ isn’t quite the same thing as ‘evenly balanced’.
With this in mind, let’s dig a bit deeper into the positive-negative charge issue in subatomic particles. A neutron carries no net charge – but even that ‘neutral’ particle contains positive and negative elements. It’s formed from three quarks: one up quark with a charge of +2/3 and two down quarks each with a charge of -1/3, giving a total net charge of zero.
Whether that counts as ‘charge neutrality’ depends very much on whether those charges always have equal effect. We’ll see.
Looking even further into that neutron: either of those two down quarks may, at some time in a solitary neutron or in certain atoms, subdivide into an up quark and an electron [plus an electron antineutrino with zero charge] – a negative charge of -1/3 becomes a positive charge of +2/3 and a negative charge of -1.
This is known as neutron decay or the weak interaction, respectively, and it shows that even a single quark has both positive and negative charge components hidden up its sleeve.
Weighing up the positives and negatives
The first and most important fact to note is that the electric charge on a particle is a spinoff of the wave or waves forming that particle. You won’t find this in the mainstream scientific literature (with two notable exceptions), but it’s absolutely beyond question. Just as light was shown to be a wave effect over 200 years ago by its formation of interference effects, so material particles were also shown to travel as waves, by similar interference effects observed in matter a hundred years ago. The destinations of interfering electrons, including the charge on each, are determined by that wave-based effect - so the charge must be part of that wave-based effect, i.e. it must be a feature of the wave forming each electron.
Photon polarization (or ‘polarisation’) can come in many forms: plane (at any angle); elliptical (at any angle and in an infinite variety of eccentricities); circular (just two versions: clockwise and anticlockwise). All other forms can be expressed as a combination of those last two, i.e. every polarization state can be seen as a mix of clockwise and anticlockwise polarization in varying proportions.
From this it’s clear that clockwise and anticlockwise polarized photons are the two fundamental states from which all other polarization states are derived. They’re also clearly opposites of each other, in a very real sense. That makes them the ideal candidates for the formative photons that give us those two opposite types of particle, the electron and the positron.
Two scientific papers from different sources have proposed that the electric charge on a particle such as an electron is a residual effect from the extended electromagnetic fields of the looped photon forming that particle. They’ve further proposed that a circularly polarized photon, looped around on itself, is the most likely source of an electrostatic charge effect emanating evenly in all directions.
We can infer from this that a photon circularly polarized in an anticlockwise sense, wrapped around on itself, would produce a particle with a negative charge – an electron – and a clockwise circularly polarized photon would produce its opposite, a positron. Or it may be the other way around, the detail of which polarization state produces which charge doesn’t matter at this stage.
We can infer rather more than that, though.
Every photon in the universe is made up of a mix of clockwise and anticlockwise polarisation components (including possibly all one or all the other). This must include the photons forming material particles: every particle in the cosmos is a mix of those two polarisation types; that mix will in turn lead to a mix of positive and negative charge in every particle, a mix that gives any particle its net charge.
This explains, very simply, how it is that a proton can have a far greater mass than an electron but the same size of charge: the energy forming a proton is an almost equal combination of clockwise and anticlockwise polarisation; the slight difference in those two components gives a net charge that’s the exact opposite of the charge on an electron – a charge created from all its energy content being polarised in one direction.
This means that every part of any particle’s energy content – and so every part of its mass – contributes to that particle’s net charge. And so every part of any particle’s energy content plays a part in its electrostatic influence.
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Let’s now return briefly to our country with its left- and right-wing supporters: we’ll call them reds and blues for short. Better still, we’ll have two countries, A_land and B_land, each with one million inhabitants of whom half are reds and half are blues in each case. We’ll then consider international relations between A_land and B_land.
We could say, in overall terms, that A_land and B_land are both neutral in their politics. Overall A_land and B_land neither agree nor disagree with each others’ politics, so there’s no ‘meeting of minds’ that would draw the two nations together politically nor is there any ‘difference of views’ that would drive them apart. So there would be no attraction or repulsion between those two countries, right?
Let’s focus on the fine detail.
It’s fair to assume that reds in A_land have similar views to reds in B_land, and so get on pretty well with them; likewise the blues in A_land and B_land will presumably get on well with each other. We probably wouldn’t be far wrong, though, to assume that the reds in A_land are opposed to the views of the blues in B_land, and similarly for A_land blues and B_land reds..
So we have half a million reds in A_land who are attracted to half a million like-minded inhabitants of B_land and half a million A_land blues who are likewise attracted to kindred spirits in B_land. All in all, every one of the million inhabitants of A_land is each drawn to half a million B_landers who see things the way they do – whether that be a red or a blue perspective.
That’s only half the story, though. Because those half a million reds in A_land are repelled by the views of half a million blue B_landers, and the other half of A_land’s population – the blues – are similarly repelled by the views of half a million B_landers – the reds.
So just as every A_lander finds half a million of like mind in B_land, each one also finds half a million B_landers whose views they are opposed to.
So it looks like the forces that draw A_land and B_land together and the forces that drive them apart are pretty even-steven, right? But here’s a revolutionary thought: what if the force of attraction between two people of like mind is stronger than the force of repulsion between those having differing views?
Not so revolutionary, really. On a local level, if you share another person’s views you might form a club on a topic of common interest, go down the pub with them regularly, whatever; if you disagree with someone else’s views, as long as it’s not a serious clash of ideologies you’ll just choose not to have anything to do with them.
Differences may flare up on major issues, of course – but it’s likely that your bond with others of like mind will be stronger overall than your antipathy towards those whose views you disagree with.
[N.B. This is just an analogy; it doesn’t have to be proved to make the point!]
In the case under consideration we have a million A_landers, each of whom agrees with half a million B_landers and disagrees with half a million B_landers. The difference in strength of feeling between ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’ may be absolutely minimal – it’s being multiplied a million times, half a million times over, that’s 500 billion times the individual one-on-one effect.
The consequence would be that, despite the apparent neutrality of both A_land and B_land, there’d be a strong attraction for those countries to come together in some sort of political union, partnership, whatever. All because of that miniscule difference in strength of feeling over ‘agreeing’ and ‘disagreeing’ in individual cases.
Ok, this post is about particles, not politics. So let’s translate that argument into attraction and repulsion between particles. First let’s just note one obvious, but otherwise insignificant difference between politics and particles: in the latter it’s opposite charges that attract and like charges that repel, in contrast to like political affiliations attracting and opposite affiliations pushing people apart.
With that proviso in mind let’s now consider what might be the consequences if the force of attraction between each unit of oppositely-polarized energy in two particles were just a tiny bit greater than the force of repulsion between units of like-polarized energy in those two particles. The results turn out as follows:
(a) In every case, regardless of net charge, there will be a small attractive force between the two particles, proportional to the product of the total energy content of each – so also proportional to the product of their masses;
(b) If both particles carry a non-zero net charge (i.e. unequal amounts of clockwise and anticlockwise polarized energy) then in addition to that attractive force between them there will be a further force between them proportional to the product of their two net charges; in the case of unlike net charges that additional force will also be attractive, in the case of like net charges it will be repulsive.
This is of course exactly what we observe in practice. Effect (a) is what we refer to as gravitation, effect (b) is referred to as electrostatic attraction/repulsion.
Both of these effects can be fully explained by marginally different degrees of attraction and repulsion between components of unlike charge (opposite polarization states) and like charge (matching polarization states) in the energetic composition of a material particle – and so also for any physical object.
One might then ask: “But why are those effects marginally different?” The simple answer to this is: “Why should they be the same?” Each must be a result of an interference effect from the extended electromagnetic field of one particle on the formative photon(s) of the other – a different effect in each case; there’s absolutely no reason why they should just happen to turn out identical.
We could go a step further and observe that in the case of attraction the structure of the attracted particle is being enhanced by that interference effect on its side nearer to the attracting particle (inducing a linear energy component of motion toward that particle), whereas a repelled particle is being enhanced on its side further away from that attracting particle (inducing a linear component away from it). Since the electromagnetic field of the attracting/repelling particle weakens with distance, it’s wholly likely that the fractionally more distant repulsive effect is a tiny bit weaker than the closer attractive effect.
Whatever the reason, the effect that we refer to as gravitation is fully explainable by a marginal difference between attractive and repulsive electrostatic effects. So it is that gravity can be explained without introducing an additional force:
gravity, as a force in its own right, doesn’t exist.
It could be a while before that particular penny drops - with or without gravity - in mainstream academic circles…
In other words, simple forces of attraction and repulsion between two particles made up of a combination of ‘like charge’ and ‘unlike charge’ elements may be interpreted as a combination of:
(a) an effect which is always attractive, proportional to the product of the masses of the two particles (since mass is itself proportional to total energy content).
[G = unit gravitational attraction];
and
(b) an effect which is proportional to the product of the net charge on each of the two particles, repulsive if ‘net charges’ are of like type, attractive if they are of opposite type. This effect reduces to zero if either particle carries zero net charge.
[E = unit conventional electrostatic effect].
This is the interpretation which is conventionally applied to experimental results – an interpretation shown by this analysis to involve a possibly spurious addition to the other fundamental forces of nature.
The Gravitational Field and Curved Spacetime
So where does this leave us with regard to Einstein’s description of gravitation as ‘curvature of spacetime’? By now you won’t be surprised to learn that not only does this spun-light explanation of gravity agree with that description – it even explains what that ‘curvature of spacetime’ is, how it comes about and how it influences the motion of objects of all sizes from satellites to galaxies.
Every particle of matter in the universe is surrounded by (or ‘consists of’, depending on how you look at it) a time varying electromagnetic field effect that's the extended manifestation of the photon(s) from which the particle is formed in each case. That field effect extends out from each particle without limit, diminishing in strength with the square of the distance from its ‘home particle’ (that’s the way it is with electromagnetic fields, they don’t have a sharp cut-off but rather they diminish with distance, to infinity).
Those effects carry the combined influence of clockwise and anticlockwise polarization components of those formative photons, giving combinations of what we refer to as positive and negative electrostatic charge. Around particles or combinations of particles with a non-zero net charge this gives rise to a positively or negatively charged region of space, in addition to the more subtle equally-balanced charge effect that we refer to as gravitation.
On the larger scale those non-zero net charges tend to balance out, leaving us with an evenly-balanced electromagnetic ‘sea’ formed from the combined extended fields of all material particles. Each particle contributes to that field according to its mass; this contribution diminishes with the square of the particle’s distance from any particular point in that sea.
So overall we have a cosmic ocean of equally balanced positive and negative charge effects, with the depth of that ocean at each point depending on the totality of mass around that point – stars, planets etc – and how far away each of those masses is. Those equally-balanced charges give a net gravitational effect.
[In passing, we could relate this to the proposal from some that the universe is holographic: every tiniest part of the universe carries an interference-pattern imprint of every element in the universe, whatever its size or distance; a hologram is an interference pattern.]
The varying depths of this ocean, endlessly changing in time as well as space with the constant motion of planets, stars, galaxies, is what’s referred to in General Relativity as the contours, or curvature, of spacetime. The measure of that ocean depth, that strength of gravitational effect, at every point across the universe is the scalar field of gravitational potential.
Of course that gravitational potential at any one point doesn’t tell us how strongly, or in what direction, an object will be attracted by that gravitational potential – any more than the height of a particular point on a mountain tells us the strength or direction of the force on a sled poised at that point. For this we need the vector gravitational field, which is simply the gradient (slope – both steepness and direction) of that scalar field; this is totally analogous to the slope at any point on that mountain. [N.B. ‘Mountain height’ = ‘ocean depth’ here.]
So we see how space, whilst being apparently totally open, does indeed have a ‘shape’ that determines how objects move through that open space.
We see how massive bodies such as planets or stars create gravity wells into which smaller objects can fall, deep pockets of electromagnetic field strength that draw things in just as if they’re falling down a hole.
Even light is affected, since the linear time-varying electromagnetic field effects that form photons are subject to interference from the non-linear time-varying electromagnetic effects that form the so-called gravitational field. This is most apparent in that ultimate gravity well, the black hole, in which those non-linear effects are so intense that they effectively form a bottomless pit from which even light itself can’t escape.
In short: navigating a route from earth to another planet, for example, isn’t just a case of plotting a line from here to where that planet is, or even where it will be by the time you get there. We have to take account of the gravitational contours of spacetime, including how those contours will be shifting throughout our journey in ways that can sometimes be pretty complicated.
Filling in the details
This post so far has given a broad-brush description of the mechanisms responsible for the effect referred to as gravitation. It should be pretty clear by now that this effect can be fully explained without bringing in any additional factor over and above electrostatic and electrodynamic (magnetic) interactions - once we recognise that the attractive and repulsive components of those interactions needn’t be (and almost certainly aren’t) equal in magnitude. It’s that marginal difference in magnitude which gives us those so-called gravitational effects.
We haven’t yet, though, looked at the subtler elements of these mechanisms. How is it, for example, that the extended electromagnetic fields of the particles in a gravitating mass (such as a planet or star) give rise to that attraction? How can we be sure that it’s the extended electromagnetic fields of particles that create electrostatic effects in the first place? What about negative energy and escape velocity - two well-documented concepts that apply to objects in a gravitational field? What about the Equivalence Principle, which equates effects of a gravitational field with effects of a state of acceleration? What about gravitational time dilation and the slowing of light in a gravitational field? Not least, what about black holes?
All of these issues are covered in the next post: Gravity II: the Sequel - coming shortly.
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