Testing the gravitational inverse-square law

Physics World ^ | April 2005 | Eric Adelberger, Blayne Heckel and C D Hoyle

[PatrickHenry]

Links for further reading, pics, and author info are in the original article. Bold and underlining added by me. I can't guarantee that the formulas, especially the Greek letters and exponents, copied correctly, so please rely on the original article.

[PatrickHenry]

SciencePing

An elite subset of the Evolution list. See the list's description at my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail to be added or dropped.

[Izzy Dunne]

But an ant, for instance, sees the cable as a 2D object, because it can crawl along and also around the cable.

Here's a link to a a NOVA program about that very topic:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program_d.html .

Chapter 7 of the 2nd hour talks about the ants on the cable.

You can watch the whole three hours online.

[spinestein]

[If the universe contains more than three spatial dimensions, as many physicists believe, our current laws of gravity should break down at small distances.]


This is timely because this subject came up on a different thread about the teaching of evolution in Kansas schools. The point was made that there are flaws in the "theory" of universal gravitation:

1)Scientists today don't have a coherent explanation for universal gravitation that doesn't rely on invoking spurious "extra-dimensional" explanations which have never been observed.

2)Einstein understood the flaws in his own theory and even invoked an artificial "cosmological constant" in order to fudge the mathematics to obtain the right answer, and most scientists can't decide on competing theories of universal gravitation like "general relativity" or "super-strings".

3)The theory of universal gravitation lacks logical consistency; If everything in the universe is attracted to everything else in the universe gravitationally, then all matter would soon be occupying the exact same space, a clear impossibility!

4)Alternative theories such as "Benign Directed Stickiness" are not given fair treatment and should be given equal time in classrooms.


There are many more proofs that refute "universal gravitation" that can be seen at "John's House 'O' Conspiracy" Web Site, here: http://johnf-ingkerry.com/




BTW, satire alert.

[DuncanWaring]

[Michael Barnes]

re #3

That is a great online offering by Nova..I watch it periodically and pick up new things everytime...Well worth the bandwidth and time spent.

[Bear_Slayer]

Space is nothing more than 'space' the absence of objects. My limited understanding of dimensions is that they are ways to describe objects and their relationship to one another within space. i.e. height, width, depth, time.

Why is it that the last few years we have seen new, wierd 'dimensions'? I don't get it.

[cliff630]

and no physical effect can travel faster than light
This has always bothered me. In general,Absolutes
bespeak arrogance.
Although the article was way past me,
I just marvel at the intellectual ability of
homo sapiens.

[lafroste]

One thing that seems to be overlooked in all this is that mass occupies the dimensions of space but is considered separate from the dimensions. I propose that mass is itself a dimensional phenomenon that has the fourth dimensional projection of both particles and waves, but is in actuality neither. Under this assumption gravity is quickly demoted from a fundamental force to a mere happenstance of more basic relationships.

[Hot Tabasco]

Chapter 7 of the 2nd hour talks about the ants on the cable.

No thanks, ants creep me out! Besides, there is another thread floating around about ants who delight in torturing and dismembering their prey after designing an intricate trap to capture them.......... Ants have intelligence and need to be destroyed.

[mikrofon]

Were Einstein still alive, he would certainly be curious to know if we were walking on a tightrope.

Physicists usually walk the Planck...

[SENTINEL]

This story reminded me of one of my most favorite books...

Flatland by E.A. Abbott

[Rocky]

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

[ProudVet77]

Physicists usually walk the Planck...

Proof of my theorem that the smarter the person the worse the puns!
mmmm. what a Bohr!

[VadeRetro]

[I'm worried that the formula didn't copy correctly.]

As the Sunni muslims like to say, "No Shiite!"

Now, WRT the inverse-square law of gravity, it works for me.

Until manana!

[Fee]

There is a great series by NOVA on the unifying theory for physics. Apparently there are about 28 factors that phycisists measure at the subatomic level and at the planetary level. These 28 factors (gravity, light, radiation, mass, etc, etc) are interrelated by equations. Unfortunately the equations at the planetary level (i.e stars, nova, planets) are not the same ones for subatomic and atomic particles observed in super colliders. Theoretically they should be, but they are not. It means there are other factors that we are not observing at the planetary level and subatomic level. Mathmeticians are trying to derive the common equations that will work at the two different levels. Their theoretical derivations if expressed into the physical world would mean that there is more dimensions than the four we can measure (height, length, width, and time). So far no one has conducted experiments that allow us to measure these additional dimensions. All of this is deducted from known and measured data. That is why it is still a theory. I hope my layman explanation helped.

[Tench_Coxe]

"Flatland by E.A. Abbott"

I have that one as well. A couple of other neat ones I have in my library ( may be out of print ), both from Dover, are:

"Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension " by Rudolf v. B. Rucker

"Taxicab Geometry, An Adventure in Non-Euclidean Geometry " by Eugene F. Krause

Neat little books that sort of take off from where Flatland left off...

[bagman]

It is an implication of Special Relativity (Einstein, 1905).

[spinestein]

To answer Bear's question- [Why is it that the last few years we have seen new, wierd 'dimensions'? I don't get it.]

...and lafroste's proposal- [I propose that mass is itself a dimensional phenomenon ]

...read the best book about string theory ever written for the layman (this is the PBS series based on the book "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/


Even though it's a bit challenging to grasp some of the concepts and several readings may be necessary, Greene explains how fundamental units of energy vibrating like loops of string in eleven dimensional space are what makes up everything we know of; including matter, energy, force, and space.

He even includes a very good explanation of "the ant on the garden hose universe" analogy.