A Discussion on the True Nature of Gravity and Inertia
Arthur A. Larson
Newton's Law of Gravity only describes its behavior, not how or why it works as it does. When questioned on how his attractive gravity worked, Newton replied that he did not deal in conjecture. Einstein said there was no force of gravity or lines of force, only paths or geodesics in space, caused by the presence of mass. Although he tried for years to link his geodesic gravity with the other particlized forces of Nature, Einstein died without achieving his Unified Theory. Today's science agrees that massless gravitons are the carrier particle of the gravity force but still does not know why gravity works as it does or how it is made. The search for a quantumized gravity is still the Holy Grail of science. String or "brane" theory is now being touted as the answer of how gravity works, using several more dimensions, but, as Stephen Hawking says, it is not science because it does not make predictions, nor is it testable. Inertia has a connection with gravity, but it is not known what this connection is. Newton thought it a fixed attribute of any mass; Einstein thought the equality of gravitational and inertial mass was an "amazing coincidence", a fortuitous accident of Nature. There is a new hypothesis of gravity that gravity is a self-movement of atoms caused by the exchange of gravitons between any two bodies or atoms to set up the conditions for the atoms to move themselves. This new hypothesis builds on Newton's Law and Standard Theory and continues on to further explain how inertia is made and how it works, using graviton exchange and graviton recoils as the linking motive force for both gravity and inertia. This new hypothesis gives two quantitative predictions that can be experimentally tested. The experiment uses a modified Cavendish Gravitational Constant experiment on earth or in space, to doubly-conclusively prove or disprove the predictions and thus the new hypothesis. If the detailed test is successful and proves the predictions, the hypothesis is proven, and the existence and operation of gravitons are also proven. Should the test fail to prove the predictions, the hypothesis is falsified. Hence the experiment is doubly conclusive. It is a firm and unbreakable mantra of science that any new hypothesis must give quantitative predictions that can be experimentally tested. Any hypothesis that does this and still adheres to all previously known and proven phenomena, is a mature theory.
