Simple quantum explanation of gravity without mass or math
Let’s start with a simple experiment:
Pore some water into a wide plate and put a bottle cork/cap into the water so that the cork/cap floats like a toy boat on the plate lake. With your finger start flapping water next to the cork/cap. The cork/cap will start floating away from your finger. Follow the cork/cap with your finger and continue flapping — the cork/cap will continue drifting away.
We’ll return to this experiment in a minute. Now some theory.
Space vacuum is not empty — it is full with quantum fluctuations. And even inside matter, in spaces between atoms, and in spaces between particles inside atoms, these fluctuations go on:
In “Time Matters” (book is available in PDF, on Amazon and Google) we discussed Time Dilation (uneven flow of time) and how matter appears from uneven time: particles, nucleus and atoms are formed within droplets of slow time. By the way, there is an interesting theory by Dr. Vivian Robinson and Dr. Williamson claiming that all particles are just photons trapped in circular (or confined in space) vs. straight orbits and they form standing and self-enforcing electromagnetic waves. Such theory explains charge, spin, and mass origin for particles. Why I mention it here? — Because droplet of slow time is a perfect mirror/cage/trap for light:
And time in such bubbles, for example in very energetic cosmic rays’ particles, can be billions or trillion times slower than the time we experience today.
Quantum fluctuations go on everywhere. For an external observer, in areas of faster time there will be more fluctuations than in areas of slower time. Now, what happens to a particle, or to an atom in an area with uneven time —where time runs faster on one side of the area vs. slower time on another side? Think about this particle as the cork/cap in the above experiment, and think about spacetime as water on the plate. On the faster time side near the cork/cap/particle there will be more water/quantum disturbances than on the slower time side. Let’s focus on fluctuations/disturbances at the fastest time side — the cork/cap/particle will drift away from faster fluctuations/time in the slowest time direction. Now, it does not appear that slower time pulls the particle. It appears that the particle is pushed away by fluctuations on the faster time side. Particle is pushed by difference in time speed, and gravity is just a gradient in time dilation:
And now, if think of gravity as time dilation “force”, then it is far from being weak. For example, gravity on Earth comes from about one billionth time difference (a small time difference) on Earth and away from it. But if we talk about time difference at our feet level and our head level, then time difference at such short distance would be way less than one trillionth (an extremely small time difference). And that small difference in time flow weighs a lot to us! And in the Universe, and even more so inside particles, time differences compared to our time can be whole and very big numbers, thus, this “force” will be huge. Apparently, this force is universal (is present in Universe, in atoms, in particles, because fluctuations are everywhere outside and inside). Scientists say that gravity is weak, because Earth “weighs” 6×10²¹ tons, but we still can live on it and not smashed by its gravity. But now we understand, that it actually comes from less than trillionth rate in time difference (an extremely small time difference), and we still feel it as quite strong.
To be more precise, this time dilation gradient applies to each atom of our body (time difference at the “top” and at the “bottom” of an atom , which is an infinitesimal distance and time difference). Total of all tiny differences is called integral (∫…dx) in calculus, which was invented by Newton when he was solving the gravity problem (around mass — see below).
Massless case! In my book I solved Vera Rubin’s puzzle about stars in spiral galaxies moving like a fish school (short version of solution is here)— often changing direction and velocity, amazingly synchronous, and without collisions: it is because time in spiral arms runs faster than outside the arms. That explained “gravitational” irregularities in spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way: stars’ trajectories alter due to time dilation outside the arms (compared to the time in arms) alone, and that is caused neither by some mass nor by fictitious dark matter.
Another massless case would be propulsion system based on time dilation described by Bob Lazar. He claimed that strong force is basically the same as gravity, and the craft engine they were reverse engineering was converting/rescaling one into another. I analyzed physics of his story from half a dozen angles in Time Matters.
Einsteinian/Newtonian case: Why do we observe gravity around mass? In Time Matters we discussed that a matter object (with captured/canned slow time inside) displaces/pushes-away some time from the space of its location, just like an Archimedes object, when submerged into a liquid, displaces some volume of the liquid. Displaced time creates excess/irregularity of time, which is thicker (slower time) around such object. Thus, time dilation appears around mass and it manifests as gravity.
Now we can say that quantum fluctuations are the universal clock or time (like temperature is Brownian motion). Time pressure (as pressure from quantum fluctuations) is gravity and strong force (which retains particles in the nucleus, see details in Extraordinary Stabilizing Power of Time Dilation).
