moving_target: Here is the gravitational theory of inertia and its forces in a nutshell.

1. (Action #1) The gravitational field always pushes inward against its body, so compacting the body.
2. (Reaction #1) The gravitational field also pushes itself outward away from its body, so preventing itself from collapsing and keeping itself extended in space.
3. (Actions & Reactions #2) The gravitational lines of force push each other sideways, producing radial inverse-square intensity distribution.
4. (Action # 3, the force causing acceleration) As long as a body is being accelerated it compresses its own gravitational field in front of itself.
5. (Reaction #3) The compressed field, like a spring compressed even more, presses inward all the more against its body. That incremental inward pressing is inertial force.
6. The compression of the field propagates away from the body with a finite velocity.
7. That finite velocity gives the compressed field time to interact with the body.
8. When the acceleration ceases, the remaining compression of the field propagates away from the body and there is no inertial force against the body.

I hope the above, though compact, is a sufficiently clear explanation of how the forces act.

By the way, the inverse square law of both gravity and light is not a mere geometric coincidence. I mentioned above (in the 15th paragraph of my post) that electromagnetic radiation is a propagating gravitational field disturbance.
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* Light dances to gravity’s tune. * - Hanak


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Richard J. Hanak on 2002-08-20 20:35 ]</font>