What If Gravity Is A Residual Of One Of The Other Fundamental Forces ?
Hey guys, welcome to another gravity episode. Yes, you heard me right.
You see brethren, some of us, if not most don't seem to get how very fascinating gravity actually is, the fact that we are still struggling to pin down the true nature of gravity is an indication that there are a lot of secrets and interesting possibilities about our universe that we are yet to explore/discover. But the question is,
Are we ready ?
The truth is that the answers to some of our troubling questions may not actually be far from us, we may be the ones holding ourselves from seeing it but this is not to say that i'm endorsing what we are about to discuss in this article. Preferably, i would say that the main content of this article is to explore one of the many possibilities 😉.
In our previous article we presented in the references some theories supporting gravity as being an emergent phenomenon, these theories however, doesn't say gravity emerges from any of the other fundamental forces, they seem to suggest gravity emerges mainly from quantum entanglement but at bulk level.
However, i am yet to see a current theory that treats gravity as a direct residual of one of the other fundamental forces, there are actually old theories that do but like i said before, "i'm yet to see a current one".
Let's on the other hand assume it's possible that gravity is indeed a residual of one of the other fundamental forces, the question then is, which one of the other fundamental forces is more likely to fit this model ?
Before we proceed, let's first make some interesting remarks, especially for clarity. By residual, we mean that at certain situations the force in question has very little/weak existence (residual) when it's existence is supposed to be absolutely null (have no existence at all). If however we assume that what we perceive as gravity is a residual of one of the other fundamental forces, then it's possible to explain why gravity appears to be weaker than the other fundamental forces, there's no need for extra dimensions of space, as in the case of string theory and it's variants.
Now back to our previous question, the fundamental force more likely to fit this model is actually the electromagnetic force. Apart from the concept of negativity and positivity of charges, both (gravity and electromagnetism) appears to follow similar patterns. Both are long range forces, both obey the inverse square law at classical level, gravity has it's own magnetic analog and it's called "gravitomagnetism" - an effect due to spinning masses. As a matter of fact, the gravitational version of Maxwell's equations can be derived from Einstein's field equations of gravity. Just like there's electromagnetic waves, there's also gravitational waves. One can see that classically there are similarities.
This approach on another hand can be seen as another way of unifying gravity and other fundamental forces, especially electromagnetic force. Modern approaches of unifying all fundamental forces, including gravity (theoretically) began first with trying to unify only gravity and electromagnetism, and it started around the early 20th century with the works of Gunnar Nordström - around this time only two fundamental forces were known. The approaches inspired by Nordström usually requires the introduction of extra dimensions of spacetime and they treat gravity as a force in it's own right, that is, not depending on the existence of other forces.
Historically, the investigations (experimental) into the connection between gravity and electromagnetism began far back, around the middle 19th century with the works of Michael Faraday - father of electricity, this was shortly after the discovery of the connections between electricity and magnetism. In his words and i quote
The long and constant persuasion that all the forces of nature are mutually dependent, having one common origin, or rather being different manifestations of one fundamental power, has made me often think upon the possibility of establishing, by experiment, a connection between gravity and electricity, and so introducing the former into the group, the chains of which, including also magnetism, chemical force and heat, binds so many and such varied exhibition of force together by common relations.
His experiments nevertheless didn't actually produce null results, what can be said of the results however, is that they were inconclusive, owing to his crude apparatuses. Also, around the times before the inception of Einstein's theory of general relativity when physicists were still battling to account for the anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury theoretically, attempts to incorporate electromagnetism into gravitational theories were made. In fact, some were successful, there was one in particular that relied solely on electromagnetism to explain the anomaly and it was that of Walther Ritz - Ritz ballistic theory. This theory of Ritz was an early competitor to the theory of special relativity and it seemed to suggest that gravity was a very weaker version of electromagnetism, though this idea had been in existence before this theory and it seemed to have been first stated by Thomas Young in 1807. Unfortunately, the theory didn't last for long, it lost the battle to Einstein's theories of relativity and i'm yet to see a follow-up/a modified version that is compatible with the current principles of relativity and quantum physics.
Surprisingly, current knowledge seems to suggest that virtually all forces (except gravity) above atomic scale have electromagnetic origins, this includes friction and the contact forces (push and pull) that we apply everyday on objects. This however doesn't mean gravity can't be included, there's no theory that says it's impossible/forbidden. Perhaps, it may be that we currently lack the insight to develop such a theory, one that can pass experimental tests and possibly have commercial benefits (technological applications).
Personally, i believe such a theory could also help resolve certain cosmological discrepancies that current accepted theories can't resolve with great satisfaction.
So, can gravity be a residual of one of the other fundamental forces ?
Unfortunately folks I'm not in the best position to answer such question, perhaps time can - if you understand what i mean 😉.
It's here we conclude this article, have a thoughtful day and see you next time.
For further reading
History of gravitational theory
Michael Faraday, grand unified theorist? (1851)
Thank you all once again for stopping by to read my jargons and also thank you @juecoree, @lemouth and the @Steemstem team for your valuable supports.
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Interesting read. So! We're coming back to gravity as a force rather than the effect of spacetime bending. Einstein couldn't solve it entirely then :)
Because a theory appears to pass observational tests doesn't mean it's a true description of reality, Newton's theory for example also predicted things that were confirmed by observations and yet today it's not regarded as a true/complete description of gravity. Personally, I'm a little bit skeptical about gravity being just "a bend of spacetime", such description has never been observed directly in the lab (on Earth). Few predictions of general relativity like gravitational redshift has been confirmed in the lab but there are theories that can predict such effect without requiring gravity as been a "bend of spacetime". Most successful claims are from beyond our planet - uncontrolled observations, assuming we could control gravity here on Earth (in our labs) it's possible to design a control experiment to tell with complete certainty if gravity is actually as a result of just a bending of spacetime. General relativity by it's nature suggests that detecting the bending of spacetime around objects with mass in our labs is almost impossible/difficult and it's because according to the theory, in the limit of less massive objects (like those found in our planet) and speeds far less than the vacuum speed of light we should expect Newton's theory of gravity, this on another hand can affect experimentalists psychologically - makes it difficult to design experiments to probe the theory. You may be smart to point out the bending of light when it passes by massive objects (gravitational lensing), in fact, this was the earliest observational confirmation of general relativity. This (gravitational lensing) too was and is always observed beyond our Labs, there's no control experiment to tell if it's purely as a result of spacetime bending. The reason why I'm saying this is because there's another phenomenon that one can observe light bend and it's called "refraction".
Apart from my perspectives, some physicists, if not most believe gravity is a force. One of the reasons why they believe so is that if gravity is actually fundamental, it should have nonzero existence at elementary level but then it's believed quantum physics rules at such scale and quantum theories of gravity that are successful on paper predicts gravity is a force and is mediated by the so called particles "gravitons", just like electromagnetic force is mediated by photons.
That is what it seems. Or perhaps, bending of spacetime (just like other predictions of general relativity that have been confirmed by observation) could be a consequence of gravity, not being/the cause of gravity itself.
Most likely. Even he shortly before he died became skeptical of his theories - see my previous article.
I know, the graviton has long been postulated and has not yet been found. I know that general relativity is "false", but putting the statement just like that, even if it is strictly true, is still dangerous because it can be deceiving. The idea of gravity as a bending of space-time is the theory we have for the moment.
This is a bit confusing. You don't need a laboratory to design an experiment and make empirical observations that prove or falsify a theory. Are you saying that we need that to take the idea of this theory seriously?
I think you are over thinking things or probably i didn't put it well. My point, is that at least there should be some level of control in the empirical observation.
A controlled experiment is needed to scrutinize the idea of the theory. Just in case you don't know, most cosmological claims are based on "indirect evidences", this seems to me more of a religion than science.
I'm sorry. This is already far-fetched.
Religion is based on "faith", not on "evidence".
Most religions, in fact, dogmatize the value of faith over empirical evidence.
Religions do not resort to mathematics nor do they offer mathematical models.
They do not explain anything in the natural world nor are they capable of making predictions.
All these are decisive factors that make religions incompatible with scientific thinking.
On the other hand, these "claims" and "indirect observations" in Cosmology are by far more scientific than a religion could be.
Note that these kinds of expressions and comparisons (i.e., calling the sciences "religions") are often made by science deniers (like Kent Hovind and his obsession with calling evolutionary theory a "religion", for example), so at the level of social discourse and dissemination they do harm to the scientific cause.
Before i start countering your arguments, i would love to make few interesting remarks.
My initial comment - the one you raised, clearly states that it's from my perspective, may be from your perspective or that of others it may seem more scientific.
The arguments you raised are very interesting, i believe we all can learn a thing or more from "our arguments".
This assertion is not totally true. It is those trying to formalize it just for distinction that makes it seem like religion is based on only "faith". In the actual sense, evidence is always involved. Virtually all human beliefs starts with experience from the physical world, a crude experience can lead to indirect evidences and indirect evidences can lead to faith/religion. For example, you happened to live in a world where strange occurrences takes place (the experience), occurrences that as at the moment defies what you know, the first thing a layperson would do is to assume it's due to some unknown forces. He can for example, propose that the unseen force is God, if you happen to ask such person why he thinks so, he points out at certain observations he made and accompanied with logic (based on what he knows) - this has become indirect evidence. There could be more to the observations, that is, there could be other causes, the observation at first is a "crude one". If however, the person gets tied to what he believes is the cause for a long time, without refinement, then he is setting the stage for religion (based on his belief). When it becomes full religion, is when he has followers that just accepts it by faith, together with dogmas.
What separates true science from religion is the ability to refine the crude observation, one way is through "controlled experimentation", with this, one can filter out other possibilities.
This falls under your first argument. Like i said before, it's their wish to make it that way. From my assessment, religion appears to be a part of man, whether we like it or not. Science actually needs it to move forward. I do not know where you got those informations from but it appears those who are trying to formalize religion from your perspective either doesn't understand how religion actually works or they do but are doing it that way for some personal reasons.
While this seems true, it is actually possible in theory to have a religion that utilizes mathematics. As for the case of models, everyone can make models, it doesn't have to be mathematical.
They actually do but not in the "scientific way".
I don't need to reply these, what i would say is, judge yourself.
This doesn't make the case for religion believing in evidence, but you're kind of referring to what it's known as "The God hypothesis", which by the way it's been widely dismissed among cosmologists for obvious reasons, like Sean Carroll would put it.
Religions hold the believe in things that we cannot verify and sometimes not even falsify. They demand you to believe in supernatural things: gods, goddesses, demons, spiritual realms and all kinds of things for which we have not evidence despite the hard efforts of apologists to argue the opposite. In that regard, religions are based on faith, not on evidence.
This is so ironic, hehe. I can grant you that it's been proposed that religious thinking could have an evolutionary origin, but for the rest, it's quite the opposite: science has progressed a lot from the moment we started to question the religious ideas (check out the enlightenment in Europe, for example). As science progresses, religion has lost ground and become more useless. Even the Pope says that "god doesn't have a magic wand" and the Catholic church has had to acknowledge that the theory of evolution is true, which I applaud as they become less fundamentalists by doing this. The point is how much the religious institutions and doctrines have had to back down as they're incompatible with real science.
Those who try to "formalize religion" are the apologists with their increasingly twisted arguments. Religions have been extensively investigated from many points of view related to science, such as history, anthropology, psychology and they all come to the same conclusion: they are a man-made thing.
It is possible to use mathematics for almost anything. The point of the argument is that "cosmology employs mathematics to model and explain things", whereas religion does not. Therefore, the claims of cosmology are closer to being scientific than they are to being religious, which was a case you more or less made. It's hard to find equations in theology books, you know? and they probably wouldn't serve to explain anything at the cosmological level. The fact that you only qualify this as "apparently true" is remarkable.
Can you give an example? Can you name a successful verified prediction made by a religion without using science, mathematics and without being a case of pure chance? Saying things in a sacred way and labeling them as "predictions" does not make those things "predictions". They pretend to be predictions.
Thanks for engaging in the discussion!
Hmmm. What i would tell you is that religion has different forms but they all have the same underlying pattern (including point of origin), of which i have shown you. I used the God concept as an example. Some sciences can be considered religion by looking for the patterns i have stated. The idea of religion not being based on evidence is somebody's perspective that seems true, the perspective could change in the future. Not being based on evidence cannot be the only defining factor for religion, a lot of things are involved, evidence (indirect) is usually the "starter" same as for science, there's a common ground for both (science and religion), it's at their end points they (science and religion) appear to take separate paths. In the case of science, evidence/observation is both the starter and the finisher (direct evidence is the finisher), direct evidence is never the finisher for religion. I think you don't get my perspective probably because you are not familiar with it or it's not documented in academic literature. Take your time to think it through,if however you don't accept it, it's fine by me. What I'm telling you is how i understand it based on my own investigations.
You might need to break that argument down better. The idea of drawing inspiration from natural phenomena and everyday experiences isn't enough to claim that "religion is based on evidence" The rest isn't quite clear. I'm taking about the core of religious thinking, that is, religions, even the most progressive ones, have dogmas and the most common of them is believing in the existence of the supernatural as unquestionable (such as god, etc). We have no evidence for these supernatural things, but the religious institutions and hardcore believers don't care, they prioritize their faith over the evidence. That's what I mean by religion being incompatible with science and therefore with cosmology.
Ok. Notice that this could turn into a special pleading fallacy if you're using it to defend your claim. But I will take it rather as an invitation from you to think about this more carefully. I only need more information or a better exposition though as I said previously.
My ultimate point, @clinton19, is that making these comparisons and using these expressions ("cosmology claims are like a religion") is detrimental to the cause of science education and dissemination. We live in a world where some politicians think that global warming and evolution are a religion (ironically implying that it is a bad thing).
I rest my case.😎
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