Gravity….
I hear this a lot… nobody really knows what gravity is… well, then how come you haven’t asked?
Obviously I know exactly what gravity is! And you should trust when I tell you this because I wouldn’t lie about something this important.
OK.. enough with that nonsense. Let’s get to the point.
It’s a matter of perspective… the wrong one!
I believe scientists have the wrong perspective when thinking about gravity. They treat it like a force (and I guess that’s OK) but I say it’s more like cause and effect. For example, there is a lot of debate on the expanding universe and asking if there is enough matter so gravity can cause the universe to collapse in a big crunch. The problem with that line of thinking is that gravity is only gravity BECAUSE the universe is expanding!
Matter is like a surfer riding the wave of expansion. (see my post on waves) That surfer causes a little indent in the wave front as he is pushed along. When another surfer gets close, the indents they both create merge and slide together, getting a little bigger as they combine. Get enough surfers together and the indent becomes very large and hard to escape.
If the universe stopped expanding then the surfers would stop… their indentations would go away and gravity would cease to exist. Good thing that won’t happen! The expanding universe is a lot like a ripple in a pond, toss a rock in and watch the expanding ring. We are all surfers riding that expanding ring. In a pond there are other forces trying to slow that wave down but in the higher dimensions of the universe there is no friction… no other force slowing the wave. It will continue to radiate out forever or until the wave form is so stretched out that it collapses. So the idea that gravity could slow or reverse the expansion of the universe is false.
Can you see the multiverse now?
We are surfers on an expanding wave. Atoms are held together by our perspective because their individual waves are crossed and grouped only on our expanding wave front. If they were not then they simply would not exist from our point of view. Anti-matter is just the opposite crest or peak and if those two could meet up, the wave form would collapse. Anyway, ripples in the pond are rarely alone. There are always concentric rings expanding out. Our 3d universe is just one wave crest on an expanding 4d wave. Other wave crests are a given, both in front and behind us and each one of those will also have it’s own set of atomic surfers. Or perhaps the atoms riding those individual wave crests can influence other crests if they share the same 4th dimensional wave.
Also, why would we even expect to be the only wave in the pond? There could be countless individual rings of waves in the greater-universe and each one could be expanding at a different speed. That different speed would be the cosmic speed limit for that universe… the speed of light! It would effect everything including mass and gravity.
We already know… gravity is not what it appears to be
One “problem” with conventional ideas of gravity are the galaxy spiral arms. Computer models cannot explain the arms as they are orbiting too fast and should fly apart. But what if gravity is not a force that goes out forever and for any distance, but is limited to the indentation all the surfers create… like a bowl of gravity. A spinning spiral arm in a galaxy spread out on a flat table will have to hold itself together by some attractive force, but a galaxy spinning in a bowl can easily remain in that bowl.