What is the Cause of Gravity
What has always been considered to be the hardest problem in physics turns out to be the easiest to explain.
When we measure gravity, the only thing that can be positively verified is that, here on the surface of the earth, gravity is an extremely constant upward acceleration. A constant upward acceleration could only be caused by a constant three dimensional expansion of the atoms within the earth. The universal expansion of matter is the cause of gravity.
All of the famous gravity theories begin by completely ignoring gravity’s only experimental fact and then begin crafting magical assumptions such as fields, infinite attractions, curved space-times, moving aethers, impinging virtual particles etc. What all of these assumptions have in common it that none are able to propose a way that gravity can be measured. All are metaphysical in nature and thus not subject to any positive experimental verification. All of this, just to refuse to step back and look at what gravity is actually doing.
Gravity is just an upward acceleration. This acceleration can only result from the linear expansion of the matter comprising the earth. It is this universal expansion of matter that is the simple and local cause of gravity.
This takes gravity from being a magical, infinitely complex and incomprehensible wonder of nature to being just a very slow and local expansion of atoms occurring at the very core of matter. The only thing non-local, infinite and metaphysical about gravitational expansion is the great synchronicity by which all bodies of matter expand at exactly the same rate throughout the whole universe.
For this gravitational acceleration to be constant, relative to the increasing scale of the earth’s dimensions, it must in fact be a deceleration that translates into a constant velocity relative to inertial space. It is this constant upward velocity at the surface of matter that is the universal constant for gravity.
For the earth, the constant for gravity is an upward velocity of its surface of 11,179 m/sec. To see this surface velocity in action, we merely need to step back and observe the dynamics of the solar system or even the universe itself. As the planets are all moving at orbital velocities at right angles to the sun, their combined gravitational expansions brings their surfaces closer together. The result is that each remains at a constant average distance from the sun and but appears to travel around the sun in an elliptical orbit that is actually a spiral in inertial space. There is no attraction or any other physical interaction between the sun and the planets. They remain in their “orbits” through a balance between their gravitational surface velocities and their orbital velocities. They appear to remain at the same distance apart because they are moving away from each other at the same rate that they are expanding together.
Besides just measuring the earth’s upward acceleration of gravity, there are other more direct ways of measuring the earth’s upward surface velocity. These involve the effect that this velocity has on the internal dynamics of matter. When a body is accelerated from rest, its mass is increased by the gamma factor. This increased mass within the atoms of an atomic clock causes the rate of the clock to slow by a proportionate rate. The rate the earth’s surface velocity decreases with increased altitude and inversely the ticking rate of clocks speeds up. This is true whether the measurements are made in the mountains or on orbiting satellites. This effect has been studied very carefully using Cesium clocks aboard GPS satellites and it can be accurately verified that the earth’s upward surface velocity is indeed a real velocity with a value of about 11,179 m/sec. The earth’s surface velocity at the GPS orbit is 33a333 m/sec. At this slower gravitational velocity the cesium clocks run faster by the appropriate amount. The Pound-Rebka experiment was able to measure the difference in surface velocity between the top and bottom of the Jefferson Tower at Harvard University.
The Force of Gravitational Attraction Cannot be Measured
Gravity is often used as an example of a natural law that almost everyone could agree on at least in terms of what gravity does. When we release a quarter from our hand, there is virtually unanimous agreement that it would accelerate downward until it strikes the floor. This idea, or rather belief, that falling bodies move toward the ground is the primary metaphysical principle used in the standard model of physics.
A metaphysical principle is usually used as the initial premise of a physical theory. It is an idea that has great universal appeal but by its very nature is not subject to any kind of experimental verification. This is particularly true when it comes to quarters “falling” to the floor because every physicist knows that such an event would be impossible to measure. If they were to place an accelerometer on the quarter as it was released, it would show no downward acceleration at all. In fact, air resistance would cause it to show a slight upward acceleration. If they were to place another accelerometer on the floor beneath the falling coin, it would show that it was the floor that was accelerating upward toward the quarter.
In fact, with their entire array of sophisticated measuring instruments, no experimental physicists have ever been able to show that “falling” objects undergo any changes in motion toward the ground. Faced with this dilemma they quickly embrace the metaphysical Principle of the Equivalence of Gravity and Inertia. This allows them to discard the results of their measuring instruments in favor of what everyone “knows” to be true. When a coin falls, it moves downward to a stationary floor. Some physicists will even tell you that the Equivalence Principle has been proved by experiment to many decimal places, but in each case their “proof” is in the form of a null result. This is because Equivalence is a purely negative principle that states that no instrument is capable of directly measuring the change in a body’s motion produced by a gravitational “attraction”. The logic here seems to be that if our instruments show a falling coin to be absolutely motionless then we have “proved” the Equivalence Principle absolutely.
Why not just discard all of this metaphysical mumbo jumbo? At the very least, we should allow ourselves to consider the possibility that our instruments are right when they show us that the coin remains stationary, and it is the surface of the earth that falls up.