Posted on 09/14/2010 7:10:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
As Sir Isaac Newton himself replied in response to similar questions, "hypotheses non fingo." Which roughly translates as "I don't have a clue."
That such a simple question, about so common a phenomenon, has defied a direct answer for centuries might explain why the physics world has been atwitter lately over a novel attempt to resolve the riddle. A flurry of recent papers have examined this new idea, which mixes principles from string theory and black hole physics with basic old-fashioned thermodynamics. If this notion is right, gravity turns out to be a special sort of entropy, a result of the same physics that drives matter to give up its organization and order as it succumbs to the laws of probability. Toss in a dash of quantum mechanics and a pinch of information theory, and the universe emerges, governed on a grand scale by pretty much the same principles underlying the elastic pull of a rubber band.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
All I know is, you can’t beat Dick Cheney when it comes to gravitas.
:’)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.