Gravity, what is it really?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by 2cents, Nov 9, 2006.

  1. thought this simplified illustration wld be of interest:

    http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/Explore_Our_Universe/What_is_Warped_Spacetime?/

    What is Warped Spacetime?
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    What is warped spacetime?

    Imagine walking down a street in your neighbourhood and coming upon an ordinary-looking house at the end of the street. You observe the house from the outside, walking all the way around it, and in doing so get a pretty good idea of its size, and thus how big you would expect it to be on the inside. You might picture a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and so on. Now imagine walking through the front door and finding that the house is much bigger on the inside than you expected. There is a cavernous living room, a restaurant-sized kitchen, fourteen spacious bedrooms. In short, what you thought would be an ordinary house actually contains a large mansion’s worth of rooms! Such an Alice in Wonderland experience is an example of “warped” (or “curved”) space. Surprisingly, this is not just the stuff of fiction: using his imagination and the power of mathematics, Albert Einstein discovered that our universe is actually like this, and used the phenomenon of warped space (and warped time) to explain what gravity is. This is the basis of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.

    To set the stage for Einstein’s ideas, let us begin by recalling what Sir Isaac Newton said about gravity. Imagine a planet, say the Earth, moving in empty space. Being completely empty, there is nothing around (like the Sun) to exert any forces on the Earth, so it moves in a straight line, coasting with whatever speed it had to start with. Remember, there is no friction in empty space to slow, or in any other way change the Earth’s motion — it will coast forever in the same direction and with the same speed, much like a puck sliding across a (nearly) frictionless “air-hockey” table. Now let us introduce the Sun, as shown in the figure below. ...."

    click on the url to see the diagram and read on... cheers
     
  2. Very interesting.
    I stand by my philosophy, though, that gravity , and physics, arent working in your best interests.
     
  3. :p cheers acro
     
  4. Seriously, i had this discussion before.
    The person i was talking to, beleived they were the reincarnation of christ , (and may have been , how would i know) but thats beside the point.

    If no two people experience reality, the practical applications of physics, the same-
    sense, smell, sight, sound, their interpretations of-then i suspect that constitutes a mild form of space-time warp right their.

    Minute permutations of the concept are evident within the mind, certainly between two or more minds.

    Im not a huge supporter of string theory, but to cut a long story short, the human (and perhaps other animals) minds are the actual gateway to pure physics.

    A perception, is just that-some people are just plain nuts, and the mind is powerfull enough to keep them in a certain "abnormal" stasis.

    Various twins have been shown to possess significant "telepathic" emotive ability, and dare i say it, some people actually have solid "instincts" for things, forget practicallity, these energies arent usually results oriented.

    Various cop shows, suggest psychics have assisted in innumerable investigations-
    and not necessarily, in past tense, but present tense.

    And it isnt a new phenomenon, either.
    What does this mean, for the concept of space time?

    If varieties of telepathy are a fact, if seeing the past is a fact, without physical presence, if intuition is a component OF space time-
    then what does that mean?


    I didnt get any answers from the jesus guy either, he just said
    "yeah, you know, stuff happens, isnt it great?"

    And im inclined to agree, mostly.
     
  5. I think it was Star Trek that posited that gravity was a force transmitted by the gauge boson called the graviton... or was it Harvey Birdman?
     
  6. jem

    jem

    so if you had a mechanism for warping space you could travel to distant starts faster than the speed of light.

    Sorry got carried away with the star trek stuff.
     
  7. well if u listen to einstein, light speed is still a limit in any frame of reference for energy/matter/light, as far as traveling across the spacetime matrix goes... however this is not to say that holo-type 'connections' may not be attempted via any existing extra-dimensions, once we identify them and learn to play with them... they may very well obey entirely different 'laws' for all we know...
     
  8. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    I think gravity is a scam by elevator and airplane makers...