Can the Effects of Gravity Be Canceled? by James Lee Hoover

Dear James,

You're quite right in pointing out that the gravitational interaction of antimatter with matter has not been established. Of course, if it were repulsive, this would violate Einstein's equivalence principle, but that's what experiments are for! I understand that there is an experiment set to run in 2015 that may resolve this. Take care,

Ben dribus

Dear Jim,

I read through your essay and here is the promised honest feedback.

First, a quick summary: as I understand, you propose that given a particle physics type formulation of gravity, it may be possible to give a theoretical underpinning for the possibility that the effects of gravity may be canceled, and furthermore that the recently discovered phenomenon dubbed 'dark energy' may be an indication that this is indeed happening at the largest scale. In the final parts of your paper you mention the possibility that some of the unexplained UFO sightings may already demonstrate that this can be exploited technologically.

The comments I am about to make and the criticism is meant to be in the spirit of helping you make it more likely to attain what I presume you want, namely that people in your target audience, the physics community, will listen to what you have to say and consider your views seriously.

1) You should be very careful in phrasing certain sentences that are common knowledge among physicists, so as not to make obviously inaccurate statements. For example, you said:" For Einstein, gravity was not a force at all, but a curvature in space-time, otherwise known as "the fourth dimension."

This sentence contains two inaccuracies, one minor, the other major. The minor one is that the curvature of spacetime is expressed via the Riemann Tensor, yet it is not the case that gravity *is* the Riemann Tensor. Rather, gravity is expressed in terms of another tensor which can derived from the Riemann Tensor as well as the metric tensor, sometimes called the Einstein Tensor. The major inaccuracy in your sentence is that spacetime is not the fourth dimension, time is.

Now, I know exactly what you meant, but a less sympathetic reader will use this to dismiss the rest of your paper, which I'm sure is not what you want.

2) You relied in your exposition of some physics popularizers such as Krauss and Kaku, most likely in part to gain more credibility for your views.

One of my professors told me an anecdote which shows that (unfortunately) those who spend a lot of time explaining physics to the public do not enjoy a high credibility among many influential scientists because they are thought not to spent enough time doing research. He said that when he organized a certain function and invited a certain physicist of high repute, that person nearly cancelled his appearance when he found out that Carl Sagan was also invited. The only way to get him to come was to arrange it so that there would be no picture in which both would appear together.

My point is, if not even Carl Sagan had a high credibility in certain circles (which bespeaks of unbelievable arrogance to me), then mentioning Krauss and especially Kaku is not going to help with the credibility of your argument. In fact, citing them gives more of an impression that you don't really know what you are talking about, since otherwise you could have just cited the original scientists who came up with these theories.

Again, this is not my view, but I am just trying to help you see your work more from the perspective of the community you are evidently trying to reach.

3) Your mentioning of UFO's is an absolute faux pas, and it seems to me that you already know this, as you stated:" Because our science says this is impossible and such reports

tend to invite ridicule, serious investigation is left to mostly non-scientific organizations which

investigate and monitor"

The only kind of person who can state something like this and still has a chance at being taken seriously is someone who has earned the respect of the scientific community, and even such a person would risk serious damage to his reputation. Certainly if a novice to the field says something like this, it is only taken as an indication that that person suffers from a certain type of delusions

Ok, I hope you found my criticism helpful, again it was not meant as an offense but rather as a way to help you see your paper through the lens of the people you presumably are trying to reach.

All the best,

Armin

Dear James Lee Hoover,

As promised in my forum, I am adding more info to my response. In my essay, I explain how general relativity can be derived from a more general theory of gravity when we neglect the interaction and gravitational components of the stress-energy tensor in this latter. The resulting approximated tensor is then the tensor for matter alone T_ab and this is the tensor which you can find in Einstein equations G_ab = (8piG/c^4) T_ab. When we consider the neglected components the Einstein equations are substituted by equations (27) in the reference [9] in my essay. You can see two new terms at the right-hand side of the equation, one explains phenomena associated to dark matter [11], the other explains phenomena associated to dark energy. In fact computing the value of T_ab^{DE}, from first principles, we obtain an excellent agreement with the observed value, solving the cosmological constant problem!

You ask for attractive gravity in your essay. Well, when the generalized graviton equation is solved we obtain both attractive (spin-2) and repulsive (spin-0) components. Under ordinary Newtonian conditions the repulsive component is small and thus we obtain

F = F_{2} F_{0} = -3/2 m \grad \Phi 1/2 m \grad \Phi = - m \grad \Phi

i.e., the ordinary attractive Newtonian force.

However, for strong gravity the physics is both qualitative and quantitatively different. The repulsive component is much larger and compensates the purely attractive force impeding, for instance, the formation of a singularity during the collapse of a massive star. General relativity misses the correction terms and predicts non-physical singularities.

Regards.

James,

I had read through your essay, and will again before the end of the contest. After I realized that mine wouldn't make it into the top 35 I decided to approach it from what is currently known about unimodular theory and so have been busy with that (not to mention school). I look forward to posing more questions.

Regards,

Jeff

Dear James,

In my essay you can find that at the level of particles is Strong gravitation , and gravitation is a real force in Covariant theory of gravitation . It was found that Gravitational torsion field may counteract to strong gravitation of nucleons in atomic nuclei explaining strong interaction. In the Theory of Infinite Nesting of Matter the wave quanta and relativistic particles are born by compact objects such as nucleons and neutron stars and fill all the space. These wave quanta and relativistic particles then play the role of gravitons and form objects at high levels of matter. The ether in the theory composed of gravitons fluxes, so we can find isotropic reference frame in every point of universe free of matter. In isotropic reference frame the speed of light and speed of gravitons is the same and do not depend on direction. Near the masses isotropy is broken and the force of gravitation appeared. Also we can understand force of inertia as the action of gravitons fluxes during of change of motion state. The mass of Higgs boson is considered about 125 GeV from the proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. See http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.0449 and http://www-d0.fnal.gov/Run2Physics/WWW/results/higgs.htm. In my opinion W-bosons and Higgs boson are quasiparticles. In the comment No 6 (February 11, 2010, http://serg.fedosin.ru/download/com.pdf) of Comments to the book: Fizicheskie teorii i beskonechnaia vlozhennost' materii. Perm, 2009, 844 p. ISBN 978-5-9901951-1-0. (in Russian), I found that appearance of W-bosons is a demonstration that substance of collided protons has speed about the value of escape velocity at the surface of proton in the field of strong gravitation. On the other hand it is supposed that the characteristic speed of substance of neutron star is 0.23 c (where c is the speed of light), and in nucleons the characteristic speed is c. Accordingly for praons the characteristic speed is 4.3 c. Praons relate to nucleon in the same way as nucleons relate to neutron star. So if we shall collide protons then it possible the case that their substance speed is equal to the speed 4.3 c of praons. According to calculation the energy of protons in such collision must be more then sqrt(s) = 1.4 TeV. The situation with Higgs boson may be similar to such collision of two neutron star when their substance flies with the speed of light after collision. About weight and force of gravitation see for example Model of Gravitational Interaction in the Concept of Gravitons.

Sergey Fedosin

Dear James, This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:

Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.

A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.

An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.

Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity

Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.

Thank you and good luck.

Vladimir

Dear James,

I am a bit confused by your recent post on my essay thread. I do not know if you are requesting further feedback on your essay or saying that you intend to leave further feedback.

I don't really think I can usefully discuss the ideas about gravity you have presented with you. You have presented the ideas in a very readable way and I like the colourful warped space-time and dark energy diagram. I'm thinking about gravity a bit differently, which is compatible with the explanatory framework I have developed. That is- the manifestation observed (that has been described as due to the curvature of space-time by mainstream physics) actually has a foundational cause that has been unrecognised. I argue that it is the result of all of the changes in orientation and location of a body as it moves along its Object universal trajectory.

Those motions will have an effect on the surrounding environment, making it easier for a neighbouring object to move towards it. This might be moving with the distortion of the environment rather than against it and by following the path of least resistance becoming closer to its neighbour.I have previously suggested that it might be due to density differences in the surrounding wake but it seems more likely to be that there is change in location of the medium of the environment as it is disturbed by the motion of the mass. In either case IMO it is the movement of a mass that is the source of gravity not the response of space-time to the static presence of the mass.

This view of gravity makes overcoming it a matter of altering the environment in the vicinity of the object that is to move against gravity, so that the resistance to that motion is decreased or as we do now adding extra propulsion to counteract the 'force' of gravity. It may be that the popular idea of spinning UFOs could be a way of overcoming the 'viscosity' of the external Object reality environment by breaking the connection with it, so the craft burrows through the 'hole' that is made as it moves. That is just speculation. As UFOs are not a serious interest of mine I regret that I can not have an in depth serious discussion with you about them either.

I hope that even if that is not what you really wanted to hear it is slightly interesting, being at least on the topics of gravity and UFOs.

Kind regards Georgina.

After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

Cood luck.

Sergey Fedosin

Dear James,

You are quite right. Evolution of star is repetition of evolution of particles. So in the theory structure of star is the structure of particles with some addition because of difference of scale and mass. From here we find models of particles and forces.

Sergey Fedosin

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin