Science Gravity is an entropic force

[dougkeenan]

Erik Verlinde has accomplished what I didn't expect to see in my lifetime. I'm only half way through his paper but this is stunning work. His paper here. His blog here.

Starting from first principles and general assumptions Newton's law of gravitation is shown to arise naturally and unavoidably in a theory in which space is emergent through a holographic scenario. Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even Newton's law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle leads us to conclude that it is actually this law of inertia whose origin is entropic.

 

[RisingFury]

Well, that's gonna be an interesting read! Thanks!

 

[Eagle]

Interesting, I'm trying to see how close it is to an idea I had where gravity may be simply be where individual molecules flip and reconnect with the electroweak(EM+Strong+Weak) which creates a net attraction. (Its hard for me to explain as I think about it visually)

Just imagine two magnets placed near each other in freefall. The magnets do a quick flip and attract. Only if you have them perfectly aligned in opposition will they repel, otherwise they spin and attract. Now make it billions of magnets randomly aligned and held in crystal structures.

EDIT:
Well, I'll need to reread it again. To me it seems our theories are similar, but don't take my word for it.(mine is probably the incorrect oversimplification, or at least unsupported generalization.)

 

[Artlav]

Interesting.
As i understood it, it's an age-old idea of things tending towards increasing of complexity being put as a basis for everything, with nice derivation of many modern laws of physics.
Gravity being an emergent force can also explains why it is "weaker" than fundamental forces.

On the bad side, i still can't see how to make an anti-gravity device in this model