What's so wrong about gravitational force acting at a distance? Well, try to imagine swinging an object in orbital motion without a string connecting it to the central point. Gravity as described in today's physics is just that; a pulling force acting at a distance even through vacuum, with no mediation of any material or known force field. If one calculates the attraction between the Earth and the moon, one would realize that if this force field had to be replaced by a weightless steel cable, it would require the cable to be about 800 km in diameter in order to withstand the strain. Between the Earth and sun, the cable would have to be nearly as large in diameter as the Earth; and the attraction between the components of double stars is millions of times greater than between the Earth and sun. This imaginary pulling action gives the false impression that the masses are the sources of such yet unknown, mysterious force field, we call the gravitational field. This also leads anyone to search for the force generating mechanism within the mass itself. Today, we are used to the term Earth's Gravity, but what if Earth's gravity is not generated by Earth itself? It is a known fact that the gravitational pull decreases as one goes deeper towards Earth's core, so what's going on here? Einstein also showed that matter distorts space-time, and that space-time exists independently from matter. Since the force acts upon the surrounding space of matter, including all elements within the matter itself, then there is a good chance that the gravitational force is generated by this space-time distortion around the mass, which in mechanical terms would generate a pressure difference. If space is made up of energy, then this means that such energy is being somehow distorted at the mass location. Note that even though Einstein proposed this space time bending by the presence of mass, it did not help much with our understanding of gravity. Using Einstein's classical ball on a rubber membrane analogy, modern physics seems happy enough to show that gravity is a curvature of space, even though the cause for stretching down the rubber membrane is unknown. In such an analogy, it would be gravity itself that deforms the elastic sheet by the ball’s weight, but what deforms space by a body’s mass? It's gravity! If so, then gravity cannot be caused by the curvature of space, because the curvature
would be caused by gravity. And as it should be clear enough for all you clever readers, this is a clear example of a circular definition, a useless analogy which explains absolutely nothing. It sounds good only as long as one does not try to understand its significance.
This reminds me of a statement by J.L.Synge in the following passage:
..... Thought is difficult and painful. The difficulties and pain are due to confusion. From time to time, with enormous intellectual effect, someone creates a little order - a small spot of light in the dark sea of confusion. At first we are all dazzled by the light because we are used to living in the darkness. But when we regain our senses and examine the light we find it comes from a farthing candle - the candle of common sense. To change the metaphor, the sages chase their own tails through the ages. A little child says 'Gentlemen, you are chasing your own tails.' The sages gradually lose their angular momentum, and, glancing over their shoulders, see what they are pursuing. But most of them cannot believe what they see, and the tail chasing does not die out until a generation has passed.....
This leads us to a very fundamental question: What mechanism is generating such pressure difference and distorting this space time or energy balance?
Note that Newton never stated that gravity is necessarily an attractive force. That notion has been erroneously applied to him over the years. In fact, Newton wrote:
"and we derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy."
Even more specifically, in Query 31 he affirms the following:"How these attractions may be performed I do not here consider. What I call attraction may be caused by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use that word here to signify only in general any force by which bodies tend toward one another, whatsoever be the cause."
On page 2 of Principia, Newton wrote that gravity can be either an impelled or attractive force as follows, "A centripetal force is that by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or in any way tend, towards a point as to a center. Of this sort is gravity."
Searching in his early notebooks under the heading "Quaestiones" Newton speculates that gravity is caused by the descent of rays which strike all bodies and pushes them down. "Whither ye rays of gravity may be stopped by reflecting or refracting ..."
In Principia, he also expresses his firm opinion opposing the concept that gravity acted through empty space as an "inherent property of matter":
"...that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe no man, who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking, could ever fall into it."
Is it my impression, or are we to blame of falling into it ? Believe it or not an elegant solution for this mess exists.
An important note about PHOTONS
Before going into greater detail on gravity's real mechanism, I have to clear a few ideas on the term photon. To do this I shall directly quote Max Planck, the originator of light quanta. In his recorded remarks which took place during 1909 in an audience at Einstein's talk we see him resisting Einstein's hypothesis of atomistic light quanta propagation through space. "If Einstein were correct, how could one account for interference when the length over which one detected interference was many thousands of wavelengths? How could a quantum of light interfere with itself over such great distances if it were a point object? Instead of quantized electromagnetic fields, one should attempt to transfer the whole problem of the quantum theory to the area of interaction between matter and radiation energy". That is, only the exchange of energy at the point of interaction between the source/target matter and the classical electromagnetic field is quantized. The exchange takes place in units of Planck's constant times the frequency, but the fields remain continuous and classical. Quantization can be considered like one trying to measure a time varying analogue signal with an analogue to digital converter, or with a digital voltmeter, the quanta is equivalent to the least significant digit, but that doesn't mean that the signal is varying in steps. So we have quantized or analogue to digital process interactions taking place between continuous electromagnetic fields and matter. This approach to quantum theory handles very well all of the problems of quantum optics including Einstein's photoelectric effect, without the requirement of the actual matter-like photon flying around. Note that the quite misleading term photon was not introduced by Planck, but by a chemist, Gilbert Lewis in 1926. Unfortunately with Einstein's support, the term photon is still misused in most scientific literature to described a fundamental and yet undetected massless particle that carries the quanta of electromagnetic energy and travels at the speed of light! This is all wrong, as electromagnetic energy does not need a particle to propagate in space. The same Einstein tells us that nothing, can be accelerated to the speed of light, except of course EM waves. Although I still make the use of the term photon in describing EMRP gravity theory, it is important that one understands, that matter-like photons do not fly from source to target, in fact no photon has ever been detected during its alleged travel. We never experience a photon, but only its effect at source and target. Propagation is a property of electromagnetic radiation, and photons are the quantized effect of momentum and electromagnetic energy released at the interface between either source matter or target matter and the electromagnetic wave. We see light at the source and at the target matter, but we never see light travelling its path. Literally speaking, photons are only what and where you experience their effect. I believe that as Willis E. Lamb stated, the word photon should be stricken from the dictionary since there is no need for it. The photon is an effect and not a thing. To describe the entity that is travelling from source to target, it is enough that we use the term wave.
