Thank you, Dann, for carefully picking out the one to-the-point passage in
my whole streched out contribution on the gravity thing - delighted to
discover that someone was up to the task.
Congratulations also on making relativity and this "curved space" metaphor
alot more comprehensible to me - or, atleast, letting me *think* that I had
understood something. I'll try you out with my version of what you said to
test my comprehension. Actually you seem to be saying that, in relativity,
gravitation is a lot like what happens to a light 'wave' when it hits a pane
of glass, or the surface of the water, at an angle - refraction. The
sub-atomic particles in the apple are changing direction just a bit less
quickly when they near the earth, so that the apple performs a 'break turn'
towards the earth like a canoe with a paddle in the water. Atleast, that's
how it looks to us - but in reality what's happening is that, for the
particles in question, time itself is running slower - that's why they "run
on" towards the earth just a tiny bit more than their normal trajectory-wizz
around the nucleous would allow for.
Ok, am I anywhere near?
Supplementary: WHY is time supposed to run slower nearer to massive bodies?
- or, are we maybe to take this idea as definitional of the relative "speed
of time" and of "massive bodies" in just the same way that Newton's laws
are definitional of force and mass?
E
> From: Dan Dunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 20:44:10 -0600
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: MD Glenn, Platt, Ant and the creation of patterns
>
>
>
> elephant wrote:
>
>> ELEPHANT:
>> Look, what's the force if your "likely" here? Is it because you think
>> things wouldn't fall without gravity? That's just where you are wrong.
>> Gravity is a force, force is a physico-mathematical concept, apples can fall
>> just fine without physico-mathematical concepts. Clear? And there is no
>> 'what' that the concept refers to - the concept creates the "what".
>
> This is correct. The force of gravity does not and has not existed for nearly
> a century, but apples continue to fall. Just as it is possible to bring these
> things (like the force of gravity) into existence, it is possible to
> obliterate them. According the The General Theory of Relativity, gravitation
> occurs because time is slower in the vicinity of any massive body. If we put
> aside, for the sake of convenience, the need to define "massive body," we may
> easily imagine a small body, in the vicinity of an extremely large one (such
> as an apple near the Earth). Within the apple, particles of apple "matter,"
> moving very small distances (but very rapidly), *just happen* to randomly
> wander nearer to the Earth, and as they do, time slows for them, and so they
> become slightly *less* likely to move *away* from the Earth. This statistical
> tendency of particles to slip ever nearer to "massive bodies," and to linger
> just a bit longer in that spot than they otherwise would, is what is meant by
> "curved space." The entire process occurs on such an extremely small scale,
> that it may even be inhibited by a gust of wind or the bounce that occurs when
> the apple strikes the Earth. However, because molecules and particles that
> make them up, move so very fast compared to our human scale, even this tiny
> preponderance in favor of the "aggregation" of material bodies is more than
> enough to cause an apple to gently drop from a tree. There is no force acting
> upon a falling object, at any time. An apple "wanders" into the Earth, as the
> natural result of the random travel of its constituents and the slowing of
> time in any region of space near a "massive body.".
>
>
>
>
>
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