Hi Ian

A good, thought-provoking paper that kept me interested throughout.

However to skip straight to your "summary of the issues" there is a fourth leg or rather a fundamental to any good scientific theory: Measurements.

The reality of our situation in gravity theory is that we haven't moved very far from Newton. Even Einstein's work was largely reliant on Newton's basic research and although he offered a good alternative explanation for the effects described, Einstein made no attempt to challenge the measured effects or the derived constants.

We live in a very specific gravity well and all our experiments, knowledge and understanding are prima facie constrained by the limitations of that situation. We really can only guess that the rest of the universe operates on the same values.

One of my favourite rants on this forum is that we do not really have the tools to investigate gravity more fully to develop our understanding. While nowadays we look to lasers to detect 'gravity waves' emanating from the distant arms of the galaxy we refuse to understand that if mass-warped space-time is a real explanation for gravity then these lasers are singularly useless tools anywhere near an object as massive as the earth, much less the sun!

As you point out, we ignore far-field gravity in our calculations, on the one hand assuming there is some kind of 'gravity balance' across the universe and on the other believing that the universe is a finite and lumpy place where we should see the effects of gravity imbalance everywhere.

Until we rediscover the difference between theories derived from speculation and 'best guess' measurements and those based on intelligent observation we are doomed to endless sophistry.

{end of this rant}

Ian

Dear Ian,

All analyses of the SR,GR complex end up finding out, as you did, that they are inconsistent and disconnected from reality.

This has long been established for the reasons you identified and a few others.

You conclude: "As for the third leg on the stool, the absence of an equally credible competing theory, that is the key reason for the current widespread acceptance of the standard model, despite its challenges."

But you continue on stating that "The development of a more credible competing theory, describing an alternative view of the universe, is the subject of the paper that this document was extracted from."

Apparently meaning that you have an alternate theory to propose (if I understand correctly the implication in your phrase "alternative view of the universe").

The real problem in the community seems to be that everybody and his brother concludes that no credible alternate theory is around, while also proposing such an alternate theory.

Welcome to the club.

But in reality, SR/GR are only mentioned anecdotally in textbooks designed and meant for engineers, where true physics is described and where not a single practical application can be identified as stemming from SR or GR, and you rather find all sorts of successful applications involving electromagnetism, which is the direction that Einstein himself said towards the end of his life that research should be oriented towards to resolve the gravitation issue.

Applied physicists and engineers do not give more attention to SR and GR than they do to the Flat Earth theory survivors, who are still trying to prove that the Earth is flat, as we heard last year.

Best Regards

André

Dear Ian (Proffitt),

You wrote: "As you point out, we ignore far-field gravity in our calculations, ..."

You touch a critically important issue here (both of you), and this also is a conclusion that I reached long ago.

From clear understanding of Maxwell's first equation, that is Gauss's equation for the electric field, which is a simple generalization of the Coulomb equation, that he established by simply removing one of the 2 charges of the Coulomb equation, It appears that the Coulomb force is in action between all point-like behaving elementary charged and massive particles in existence such as electrons and the charged and massive point-like behaving subcomponents of nucleons.

On the other hand, far fields interaction precisely applies when bodies are so far from each other that their parallax angle amounts to relative point-like interaction due to the distance.

If gravity is due to interaction between elementary charged and massive particles in existence, then far-field gravity applies between all of them even at close range.

If interested, this is what I explored in this paper published last year:

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/gravitation-quantum-mechanics-and-the-least-action-electromagneticequilibrium-states-2329-6542-1000152.pdf

Best Regards

André

Dear André,

Thanks for inserting this. First thing, your reference to the Halliday & Resnick textbook made me smile, recalling Physics 101 many decades ago. Second, I took a shot at your paper, but I'm totally out of my depth when it comes to electromagnetic theory- I can only read the paper for the flavor, but not with any insight.

I do think that you're looking in an important place. My own project focusses on gravity and cosmology at the macroscopic scale. I think I have got that figured out correctly, but my theory is not based on a mechanistic understanding at the quantum scale- your arena.

Also, one of the tasks that I found interesting was working through, at a conceptual level, how the fact that gravitational effects propagate at the speed of light plays out in collapsing binary systems. The picture ended up looking very similar to electromagnetism, but with the key difference that the gravitational field doesn't interact with the systems it effects.

- Ian

Dear Ian,

I totally relate when you mention that you "read the paper for the flavor" for lack of any insight, because this is how I read physics works and papers of all kinds for decades before it all started to really make any sense to me.

When you write: "My own project focuses on gravity and cosmology at the macroscopic scale. I think I have got that figured out correctly"

I have to say that I am in the very same situation, but from the opposite end of the scale, that is, from the submicroscopic perspective, which is what I have been digging to understand.

You added: "but my theory is not based on a mechanistic understanding at the quantum scale- your arena."

In this regard, I must say that I have both a classical/relativistic mechanics and an electromagnetic mechanics understanding of the behavior of elementary charged particles at the submicroscopic level. In fact, at this level, the classical/relativistic mechanics equations all find their electromagnetic mechanics conversion.

If interested in seeing these equivalences, I purposefully put them in parallel in this last paper of mine, titled "The Hydrogen Atom Fundamental Resonance States" by calculating the same energy values from both approaches for the electron, with all energy amounts being provided for all parameters:

http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018042716061246.pdf

This is what allowed understanding that the "interaction" proper does not really travel at any velocity, but is permanently "ambient" so to speak, but that it only induces "energy", and that it is this energy whose velocity is limited to the speed of light when free moving.

Since you mention that the picture you see at the macroscopic level ends up "looking very similar to electromagnetism", then what remains to be done seems to be to coherently link up your macroscopic view with my submicroscopic view, since at the submicroscopic level, the Coulomb force interacts with absolutely all charged and massive elementary particles, whose sum of masses amounts by definition to the total mass of any macroscopic body, that in turn can only be made of accumulations of such elementary massive particles stabilized into least action stable states (atoms).

Best Regards

André

Dear André,

Phew- that's a goodly-sized article. I'll dig into it, and get back to you.

If you want to have a look at my stuff, I think you can just click on my image and then open my project, where the paper is posted. The paper is titled "The Alternative Universe 111118". It's also a good size!

Thanks,

- Ian