Gravity repels

[BenTC]

Over time I've bumped into a few comments that gravity only acts in one direction, that is, always attraction. Something about this monopole situation niggles at me and over a couple of years of musing about this a pet theory developed. I haven't the resources or time to follow this up properly, so rather than revel quietly in my self-delusionally brilliant intuition, I'll bring it into the light of day and perhaps learn something.

I haven't tracked the things I've read, but the wikipedia article Fundamental Interaction has a table that summarises the features I'm interested in. Since Electromagnetism and Gravitation have the same Long Distance (1/r^2) and Range (inifinite) behaviour, lets assume they are fundamentally similar.

Now its generally understood for ELECTROMAGNETISM:

• Similiar e-charged particles repel.
• Dissimilar e-charged particles attract.

and for GRAVITATION:

• Particles attract.

However I propose that gravity is fundamentally like electromagnetism, but with opposite effect.
That is for GRAVITATION:

• Similar g-charged particles attract.
• Dissimilar g-charged particles repel.

Comparing the above in a table shows nice symmetry. I haven't come across this exact scenario before - probably its not true - but anyway... Are there any obvious falsifying experiments or data? Does this match any existing theories? While not a scientific measure of validity, the elegant consequence of this is:

1. For our environment, similiar g-charged particles have clumped together and exhibit only attractive behaviour - hence the usual view that gravity is only attractive.
2. With infinite range, particles of the opposite g-charge from our enviroment do there best to get as far from us as possible, but then clump together much like our own. This may explain dark matter.
3. Oppositely g-charged clumps through the universe pushing against each other explains the expanding universe.

I'm not sure whether dissimilar g-charged particles are the same as matter/anti-matter. Matter/anti-matter collissions apparently generate a lot energy, but dissimilar g-charged particles may not, and may be difficult to push together.

What do you think?

cheers, ben

[Tom Ligon]

That's a poor explanation for dark matter, which is proposed to exist due to an otherwise unexplained attraction ... there is too much gravity holding together galaxies based on known visible matter.

It would be worth a glance at unexplained repulsive phenomena ... dark energy is beyond our present knowledge of physics, but evidence so far suggests the rate of expansion of the Universe overall in increasing with time.

We've never, to my knowledge, found a particle with antigravity properties, but discovering one would be profound. The fact article in the October 2009 Analog, by John Cramer, describes an apparatus similar to the Milliken Oil Drop Experiment intended to detect gravitational interactions between particles on the order of a Planck Mass. While it is a gravity wave test device, it ought to readily detect -g particles, as they would be unstable in it.

[djolds1]

That's a poor explanation for dark matter, which is proposed to exist due to an otherwise unexplained attraction ... there is too much gravity holding together galaxies based on known visible matter.

It would be worth a glance at unexplained repulsive phenomena ... dark energy is beyond our present knowledge of physics, but evidence so far suggests the rate of expansion of the Universe overall in increasing with time.

I suspect that our descendants will one day laugh heartily at our overly involved cosmological rationalizations. There is far more than a whiff of the Aristotelian epicycles in the various untestable pure mathematics "models" of the last 30 years, models which look to dominate/"win."

[KitemanSA]

I knid of like the hypothesis that gravitation only repels. Each particle is repeled by gravitons from every direction continuously except where other mass has shaded that particle from one direction. In that case, the shaded particle is pushed preferentially in the direction of the shading particle.

Earth doesn't suck, the universe blows!

[chrismb]

You've conjured up some ideas, but just because you can imagine them, it doesn't make it right or possible. I think there are many such ideas on gravity. Here's mine:

In my humble analysis; gravity is often mistaken for a force that has mediating particles (thus the 'confusion' over the Higgs boson).

Firstly, I need to say (again) that forces do not, literally, exist. They are figurative representations of change of energy, which in turn are changes of state. A 'force' is the integral of rate of change of energy wrt distance.

Gravity is experienced as a force not because it is a mediated exchange of energy, as per the *other* forces, but because it is the rate of change of configuration of matter that would *otherwise* occur were those lumps of matter to diverge at the expansion rate of the Universe. That is to say, the earth and you are being pushed apart by the expansion of the Universe. But to be pushed away from such a large mass requires energy, because that would be a change of state, as each elementary particle that makes up your body forms its own 'microstate' with each and every other elementary particle of the earth. Hence, this effect is proportionate to the product of the two bodies' masses.

That energy cannot simply pop into existence, so instead you experience an incipient resistance to that expansion in the form of what appears to you to be a force. No energy is expended whilst you remain 'in geometrical stasis' with the Earth, only when you move radially to it. Thus, I say gravity is the same force as if you were to push (accelerate) an object away from you as you change its, and your, state of momentum. But you've got energy in your arms to do that, whereas the expanding geometry of the Universe doesn't have such energy built into it, so instead it appears the exact opposite of that scenario - that those two object are actually attracting each other. It is a consequence of incipient change of state, not as a force acted by a source of energy.

Because of this, gravity is not 'dipolar', as are electricity or magnetism, it merely applies to all matter whilst the Universe is expanding. Eventually the Universe will stop expanding and gravity will drop to zero. It will finally begin to collapse, and gravity will reverse and then become repulsive to all matter.

I am therefore predicting two things a) no mediating particle for gravity will ever be found and b) the gravitational constant will change over time, as a function of the rate of expansion of the Universe.

[The expansion of the Universe may not be fully uniform either, as the Universe itself is like a 'front' of higher density material propagating through another (in this case, another dimension) so that expansion rate, and gravity, may not be easily measurable to a highly accuracy value at a given moment in time and location in space.]

[jmc]

I have thought about this kind of thing too, but I doubt it is the case as it would have a huge number of crazy implications:

Remember the force of gravity depends on the mass of an object, so a negative g-charged particle would have negative mass, this could have several crazy implications:

1) The acceleration a particle experiences is Force/Mass so if a kicked a ball will negative mass it would accelerate in the opposite direction and pass straight through me!!!

2)General relativity says that gravity fields cause time to slow down in proportion to the mass of the object what would a negative g-charged field do?

[TallDave]

Tajmar at the ESA found a gravitational force from a spinning disk. The effect was many orders of magnitude greater than relativity predicts.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 232140.htm

That's the only induced gravitational effect I've seen.

Maybe we'll learn something from LHC, though. The nonzero rest state of the Higgs boson is supposed to give rise to mass.

[MSimon]

I have thought recently that sqrt (c^2 - v^2) was geometrical. I did a post on it a year ago.

[BenTC]

That's a poor explanation for dark matter, which is proposed to exist due to an otherwise unexplained attraction ... there is too much gravity holding together galaxies based on known visible matter.

Fair enough. I don't know much about dark matter and didn't develop my idea to explain it - it just seemed a possible consequence from the little I knew. Reading about dark matter a bit more now, it seems to have a lot to do with non-baryonic matter, and my idea was with normal baryonic matter but just with opposite g-charge. I also kind-of meant it might negate the need for an exotic dark matter theory.

We've never, to my knowledge, found a particle with antigravity properties, but discovering one would be profound. The fact article in the October 2009 Analog, by John Cramer, describes an apparatus similar to the Milliken Oil Drop Experiment intended to detect gravitational interactions between particles on the order of a Planck Mass. While it is a gravity wave test device, it ought to readily detect -g particles, as they would be unstable in it.

Was this the article? http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw149.html which makes an interesting point:

“quadrupole” means the radiation made by pairs with the <b>same</b> electric <b>charges</b> vibrated against one another with a changing distance of separation. Quadrupole radiation has a <b>different emission pattern</b> and <b>a lower strength</b> than the more familiar “dipole” radiation made by vibrating objects of opposite charge against one another. Gravity waves are required to be quadrupole radiation because there are no negative gravitational masses.

This bit sparks a few thoughts:

• having a radiation pattern at all might indicate that gravity is a type of charge. Would this make any sense without an opposite charge?
• how much of the large strength difference between electric charge and gravity is due to the quadrature nature?
• the force between oppositely g-charged particles may be as strong as that between similarly e-charged particles
• with a convention that Earth made out of +g particles, any produced -g particles are going to leave the area pretty quickly - and perhaps be hard to detect. Imagine the force on a -e particle sitting next to an Earth sized mass of +e particles

[BenTC]

Remember the force of gravity depends on the mass of an object, so a negative g-charged particle would have negative mass:

1) The acceleration a particle experiences is Force/Mass so if a kicked a ball will negative mass it would accelerate in the opposite direction and pass straight through me!!!

Not quite. When your +gcharged foot approaches the -gcharged ball, the ball would be repelled by you foot. The trouble would be keeping the ball in position long enough to kick it with the entire +gcharged mass of Earth repelling it.

"F=m.a" where a=9.8m/s^2 normally has all positive terms where F is attractive. With my conjecture, "F" repels and is negative, with "a" being negative rather than "m".

2)General relativity says that gravity fields cause time to slow down in proportion to the mass of the object what would a negative g-charged field do?

Good question. I'm not up to that. Someone better would need to work it through. Intuitively (and thats all I've got to go on), I'd say that in another part of the universe that is predominately -gcharged, it will work the same. What happens when -g and +g particles are near I don't have a clue. Let me think on that some more.

[BenTC]

You've conjured up some ideas, but just because you can imagine them, it doesn't make it right or possible.

Of course, but we often need to imagine things before we can examine and develop them. Nice to hear your idea, as well as Kiteman's gravity shading idea.
However when you say "That energy cannot simply pop into existence" what occurs to me is that:

1. the energy doesn't pop into existence now - it was already there at the Big Bang and is just that continuing effect
2. the universe popped into existence

[chrismb]

However when you say "That energy cannot simply pop into existence" what occurs to me is that:

1. the energy doesn't pop into existence now - it was already there at the Big Bang and is just that continuing effect
2. the universe popped into existince

I'm talking here about 'incipient' energy that cannot come from nowhere - a bit like a metastable or activation energy-type scenario. Like, why is ice stable if you raise it to 3 deg C, but water doesn't freeze if you lower it to 3 C. Because for it to melt it has to absorb some energy from 'the system' but there just isn't enough there for it to change into the molten state straight away. It's about the difference between enthalpy and internal energy. Everthing will expand and thermalise eventually, just not right now as there isn't enough 'local' energy and that lack of local energy appears to us as a 'resisting force' - gravity.

[tombo]

The fact article in the October 2009 Analog, by John Cramer, describes an apparatus similar to the Milliken Oil Drop Experiment intended to detect gravitational interactions between particles on the order of a Planck Mass. While it is a gravity wave test device, it ought to readily detect -g particles, as they would be unstable in it.

John Cramer is an interesting character. I wish we had more like him.
He is even more impressive now that I know he can move an article 3 months backward in time. He must have his twistor working.

[gblaze42]

That is for GRAVITATION:

• Similar g-charged particles attract.
• Dissimilar g-charged particles repel.

Comparing the above in a table shows nice symmetry. I haven't come across this exact scenario before - probably its not true - but anyway... Are there any obvious falsifying experiments or data? Does this match any existing theories? While not a scientific measure of validity, the elegant consequence of this is:

1. For our environment, similiar g-charged particles have clumped together and exhibit only attractive behaviour - hence the usual view that gravity is only attractive.
2. With infinite range, particles of the opposite g-charge from our enviroment do there best to get as far from us as possible, but then clump together much like our own. This may explain dark matter.
3. Oppositely g-charged clumps through the universe pushing against each other explains the expanding universe.

I'm not sure whether dissimilar g-charged particles are the same as matter/anti-matter. Matter/anti-matter collissions apparently generate a lot energy, but dissimilar g-charged particles may not, and may be difficult to push together.

Let's look at it this way, if similar g-charged particles attract and dissimilar g-charged particles repel, and if we assume an equal mass for both you would basically see a clump of dense +g matter and -g matter moving away from each other. Why this doesn't seem to be is that the cosmic background noise should show this disparity and it doesn't. Either way what would it matter, we being obviously comprised of -g or +g matter would never see our opposites as we would separated by billions of light years, with the separation between the two having been taking place for billions of years since the Bing Bang.

Personally, I don't believe that there is a gravity "charge" either or a point source such as a particle that is the mediator of the Gravity "force" since there is no sign of either. I'm more of a M-brane kind of guy anyway.

[BenTC]

you would basically see a clump of dense +g matter and -g matter moving away from each other. Why this doesn't seem to be is that the cosmic background noise should show this disparity and it doesn't.

Cool. I was hoping for something definitive to close down this line of thinking. I get a lot of intuitive ideas and sometimes, if I don't let out, they keep coming back and distracting me. Thanks for your time.