The End Of Gravity As a Fundamental Force

An anonymous reader writes "At a symposium at the Dutch Spinoza-instituut on 8 December, 2009, string theorist Erik Verlinde introduced a theory that derives Newton's classical mechanics. In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings. He does not consider gravity as fundamental, but as an emergent phenomenon that arises from a deeper microscopic reality. A relativistic extension of his argument leads directly to Einstein's equations." Here are two blog entries discussing Verlinde's proposal in somewhat more accessible terms.
Update: 01/12 04:48 GMT by KD : Dr. Verlinde has put up a blog post explaining in simpler terms the logic of the gravity from entropy paper. He introduces it with: "Because the logic of the paper is being misrepresented in some reports, I add here some clarifications."

Comments

I usually don't rant...

[Max Romantschuk]

But 'here is two', um, seriously? English is my third language and I've yet to have problems with using is for singular and are for plural.

On a sidenote, it's interesting how tiny a force gravity ultimately is... The gravity effect of the whole...friggin...planet on your body can be countered with the atomic bonds in a comparatively meager rope. Fascinating really.

Testable, currently unseen predictions.

[Vellmont]

I see a lot of explanations and mathematics, but I don't see anything in the way of testable predictions.

Scanning through the paper the word prediction occurs twice. Here's both of them:

Does this view of gravity lead to predictions? The statistical average should give
the usual laws, hence one has to study the fluctuations in the gravitational force. Their
size depends on the effective temperature, which may not be universal and depends on
the effective value of . An interesting thought is that fluctuations may turn out to
be more pronounced for weak gravitational fields between small bodies of matter. But
clearly, we need a better understanding of the theory to turn this in to a prediction.

Wake me when the guy comes up with at least one, and it's testable.

Here is two

[SgtKeeling]

Here is two blog entries discussing Verlinde's theory in somewhat more accessible terms.

Perhaps this should be, "Here are two..." ?

Re:Just because the math works doesn't mean it's t

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Yeah, one kinda wonders if they have already decided which string theory they believe in nowadays. Apparently there were some 10^500 different theories, and that's ignoring the fact that the fundamental constants can be chosen rather freely. Furthermore, there is no proof that amongst those 10^500 (or more) theories there is one that has a positive cosmological constant.

Actually the theory has so many different permutations that starts to wonder if it wouldn't happen to be turing-complete, and therefore have zero predictive power. It would be about as useful for determining how the universe works as a calculator without a manual. Well, without the actual calculator I mean.

In connection to that : does this unification make any useful prediction ? Is it too much to presume it must lead to a way to generate gravitational attraction using electrical power, no ? Preferably a method not require TeV collisions ?