I apologize to all for my faulty physics of tides and especially for the unnecessary effort it has caused some of you.

Despite my ill-chosen effort to knock Mach, I’m still not happy with his hypothesis that the remotest of objects cause local inertial effects. When Mach suggested that we think of the universe rotating around a stationary bucket, and predicted its effect -
1. He provided not a single equation in support of his idea. None of you complained about that, and neither did Einstein. But many accept the idea nonetheless.
2. He entered the land of fantasy and science fiction. For the purpose of being entertained we willingly go along with a fantasy, temporarily suspend disbelief, and pretend that the unreal is real. But how far should we be expected to stretch our imaginations?

Let’s take Mach literally, that the bucket stayed still and EVERYTHNG else rotated about the former axis of rotation of the bucket. For starters, a bucket-centric universe is a much worse idea by far than the previously discredited geocentric one. Also, somebody would have had to quickly untie the bucket from the rope or the spinning building would twist the rope and bucket, so violating the conditions of the experiment. Next, SOMETHING would have had to hold the bucket unmoving and suspended in space (not an easy job to do.). Surely a grandfather of relativity would not have wanted to glue the bucket to Newton’s absolute space, nor would we.

Then there would be the problems inherent in getting the Earth to rotate about the bucket’s former axis of rotation. The change of rotation axis would have occurred faster than the Atlantic Ocean could have followed it and consequently England would have really been flooded and the bucket, rather than forming a meniscus, would have been filled to the brim (no, not washed away, remember it was being held still). You probably don’t like this any better than the other tide idea.

Now I can hear snickering out there and know that you’re about to pounce on me again and say that everything, Atlantic Ocean included, made the switch all at once. Oh boy! Don’t you realize that such a move would have required instantaneous action at a really big distance and who wants to salute that flag?

Some of you are ready to say that Mach didn’t propose to really do the experiment, and that he was just doing an IF-THEN gedanken experiment. (Is that where Einstein learned to do that?) We all know, of course, that IF wishes were horses then beggars would ride. So, to begin a hypothesis with “If the universe…,” is to begin the wildest kind of hypothesizing and to enter a land where anything goes. Why give any credence to a hypothesis for a source of inertia based on escape into a fantasy requiring us to negate virtually all our knowledge of reality? Especially when that knowledge was won at great cost to many of our scientific pioneers, our intellectual heroes? What greater costs are there than life, limb, or freedom?

I knew in advance that a novel proposal for supplementing Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation would not be welcomed with open arms, especially when some of its consequences go against what relativists hold near and dear. History teaches that the more radical a new proposal, the greater was the difficulty in gaining its acceptance. Ever the optimist, I consider the effort worthwhile.

Gsquare:
I was not presenting the conclusion to the novel, merely the conclusion to ideas on inertia. A novel is a fictitious prose narrative. Surely we don’t want to return to the ‘fictitious vs. real’ thing again. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Besides, inertia is just one of several subjects treated in ‘Journey.’

Now I must confess ignorance about gravitational force being parted and that one such part could vary otherwise than approximately 1/R^2, and would welcome enlightenment. I hope you are not trying to resurrect Einstein’s repelling force that only shows up at great distances; that wouldn’t be germane to the subject at hand, i.e., the relationship between a body and its own nearby gravitational field. However, it is not crucial to my theory that the gravitational force responsible for inertia vary as 1/R^2. 1/sqr(R), 1/R, or 1/R^3 would do as well.

Regarding the bodies farther vs. nearer issue, my reasoning is based first on the general expectation that if an effect is produced on a body by a body distant from it, a similar body close to it will also produce the same effect. My second general expectation is that any effect that one body may produce on another will be greater when the bodies are close to each other than when they are far apart (absence making the heart grow fonder excluded). I realize, of course, that expectations and realizations do not always coincide. If either of those expectations cannot be taken as generally valid, I would be glad to learn why.

Had you bought my book, either as paperback or ebook, you would have found that I don’t want to exclude others from potential glory, and am willing to let them be lauded for cloaking my theories in equations. Know that I have found that there are three kinds of people in the world, i.e., those who can do math and those who can’t. These days I am satisfied that the difference between = and = = is second nature to me now. Nonetheless, though facing a steep gradient, I have picked up your gauntlet and hope to return it with one or more equations before too long (famous last words!) or before I reach my allotted time (the proper time for last words), whichever comes first. I think I know the path to take. Thanks for providing the impedance so that all this energy can go somewhere.

JS Princeton: My inability to pierce what seemed like extreme terseness in your initial replies caused me to badly misjudge you. Now I, too, bear the marks of the lion. Please forgive me for any poorly chosen words. Regarding my theory of gravity (of which inertia is only a part), I am trying to show that it does account for the confirmations of relativity theory and at the same time goes a little farther. So for me, it is back to the drawing board! Note that I stop short of quoting General MacArthur.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Richard J. Hanak on 2002-08-27 22:58 ]</font>