GrapesOfWrath:]The ocean tides on Earth are caused by the gravitational effects of the Moon, Sun, and the planets. The Moon, averaging about 230,000 miles between its surface and the surface of the Earth has the strongest effect on the oceans. The Sun, at about 93 million miles, has a lesser tidal effect. The other planets have much smaller effects.

If the moon were at half the distance, 115,000 miles, a place that might otherwise experience a 10-foot tide would experience a 40-foot tide. The moon at 57,500 miles would create a 160-foot tide, and at 28,750 miles a 640-foot tide, at 14,375 miles a 2,560-foot tide. Keep going with the series and by the time the Moon’s surface is 457 miles from Earth’s surface, the tide will be 496 miles high. Not only would the Moon get a bath, but the Moon’s gravitational force would make lots of water leave the Earth and go to the Moon.

The Earth is larger and heavier than the moon. The bucket, being very small and insignificant compared to the Earth, would not have enough gravitational force to keep any of its water. Perhaps you can now understand that if the Earth orbited even a couple of miles away from (let alone right next to) a stationary bucket containing water, the Earth would suck that bucket dry to the last drop.

If Mach meant that only the really far parts of the universe should rotate around the bucket, he should have said so. If you think about that similarly to the Moon-Earth example we just went through, you should find all kinds of disruptive phenomena, including tides, all over again. I still say I’m surprised that a really brilliant physicist like Mach didn’t think of the implications of his impossible-to-do experiment
Please let me know which theories, which astronomical maps, and what calculations make it turn out to be false? I am open to all ideas and welcome any constructive criticism and new knowledge. Fallacies are false ideas arising from logical errors in reasoning. In this thread I have presented my ideas and the reasoning supporting those ideas. Have you found logical errors in the reasoning? If so, I would appreciate knowing where, so that I can make corrections.

Did you hear about the California winery whose buildings burned down during the grape harvest? The only space they could quickly rent was a warehouse of the Rath Drapery Company. Now they trample out the vintage where the drapes of Rath are stored. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

JS Princeton: On 2002-08-20 20:55 you wrote: What I have outlined above is a theory of inertia. It is irrational on your part to expect such a limited theory to take into account phenomena falling outside its scope. The theory presented here is only a portion of a more extensive theory that does indeed account for mass-energy equivalence. That theory presents energy as a gravitational phenomenon. Because gravity is an attribute of mass, there is a more intimate connection between energy and mass in that theory than in relativity theory.

Gravitational lensing fits in easily with my theory of light, though I would prefer to call it gravitational refraction. Refraction is the bending of light that is not travelling perpendicularly to a change of index of refraction in the medium or media through which it travels. The primary cause of that bending is that the velocity of light depends on the index of refraction of the medium in which it travels. That dependency is generally such that the more dense (gm/cc) the medium, the greater the index of refraction and the slower the velocity of light in the medium. Light travels slower in air than in a vacuum, slower in water than in air, slower in glass than in water, and slower still in a metal (infrared in germanium) than in glass.

The denser a light-transmitting medium, the greater is the gravitational field of the atoms in the medium. That field acts on the light travelling through it. As I mentioned above, I have shown that light is a propagating gravitational field disturbance and that such disturbances travel more slowly the stronger the field. If light enters a strong spherical gravitational field, it will be refracted as if by a lens and for the same reason: the change in velocity of the light. The same effect explains any gravitational bending of light.

As for lines of force not being physical, let’s remember that we are trying to model the world about us. In that world we sense or detect things. We also observe effects that things can have on one another. In the case of things that we can only know by their effects, such as the gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces, and light, we hypothesize causes for those effects. Those causes are hypothetical constructs to mediate between the objects causing effects and the objects being affected. We can, for example, hypothesize that there are force fields, that there are quanta, or that there is a space-time manifold to produce action at a distance. All of those hypotheses have proved to be useful in explaining, describing, and predicting effects between bodies.

Sprinkled iron filings and magnet experiments, electrostatic field measurements, or gravitational force vs. height measurements are convincing evidence that force fields have vector properties throughout the fields. And a succession of connected force vectors is, after all, a line of force. The lines of force can be followed from one material body to another. What can be more physical than something that relates one material body to another?

Vector analysis is the preferred mathematical representation for force fields. Embodying Gauss’s theorem, Greeen’s theorem, and Stoke’s theorem, vector analysis can deal with a variety of phenomena including hydrodynamics, heat flow in solids, and, of course, gravitational potential.

As for metric formulations from GR and how solutions to Einstein’s field equations work, it is irrational for you to require an opposing theory to explain features of a theory it opposes.

You claim that there is no equivalence principle at work in my theory. That claim is false because my theory has the Newtonian principle of equivalence at work. That principle of equivalence states that in a gravitational field all objects accelerate at the same rate regardless of their mass or composition.

Einstein’s view was that in a freely falling reference frame, all laws of nongravitational physics, such as electromagnetism, should behave as if gravity were absent. My view is that electromagnetic phenomena are gravitational manifestations, as exemplified, for example, by my explanation of gravitational refraction of light. Accordingly, if a laboratory were freely falling in a strong gravitational field, the velocity of light in it would be less than if the laboratory were freely falling in a weaker gravitational field.

The use of invective cannot strengthen a weak argument or give meaning to one that is meaningless; it is an automatic alarm bell calling attention to the inadequacy of the user’s argument. Only a contrary argument that presents contradictory evidence, points out errors in logic, or calls attention to misrepresentations of fact indicates strength in argument. Though you have my sympathy for your hot summer in Princeton, please don’t blame me.

On 2002-08-21 02:26 Your stated to Senor Molinaro: According to the theory of inertia I presented above, inertia is a gravitational effect and, therefore, those laws are necessarily connected. As for some of the dilemmas of contemporary physics, the gravitational theory I present offers many new avenues for resolving previously intractable problems.