New Theory of Gravity?
A recently published paper on arXiv has caused a slight commotion within the Physics community. Let me first say that Physicists have to do a lot more in-depth study to confirm this, but we could potentially be seeing Gravity from a totally new perspective.
Let me take a step back and give a brief overview of our current understanding of Gravity - Einsten's Theory of General Relativity. General Relativity is incredibly accurate and it tells us that space-time is warped by the attraction of masses. This warping of space-time is what we call Gravity. While Einstein's theory is incredibly accurate in calculating the degree of warping, it does not explain why the warping of space-time occurs in the first place.
All that has changed with this paper, which if I understand correctly, suggests that what we know as Gravity is really the physical manifestation of Entropy in the universe. Entropy tells us that everything in the universe goes from an high energy state to a lower energy state. Iron rusts, fuel gets burnt, cars slow down due to friction, suns burn out. The whole universe is slowly descending into chaotic randomness.
Another way to look at Entropy is through Shannon's Information Theory, which allow Computer Scientists and Electronics Engineers to calculate the absolute minimum amount of data (bits) that needs to be transmitted in order to overcome Entropy. That's right, everything in Information Theory is measured in Entropy.
This brings us back to the arXiv paper. If I understood it correctly, it is saying that in order for Entropy to work in the universe, the universe needs to "transmit" the mass information of every object to every other object. And Information Theory allows us to calculate the minimum amount of bits required in this "transmission". The author of this paper did this derivation and discovered that the minimum amount of data resolves to a short formula, and that formula is exactly Newton's law of Gravity. The author has not had time to take relativity into consideration in his derivation, but it is anticipated that the solution would indeed be Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.
I'm probably not explaining it clearly, but if you're interested in knowing more please visit The Hammock Physicist's blog on the paper.
Let me take a step back and give a brief overview of our current understanding of Gravity - Einsten's Theory of General Relativity. General Relativity is incredibly accurate and it tells us that space-time is warped by the attraction of masses. This warping of space-time is what we call Gravity. While Einstein's theory is incredibly accurate in calculating the degree of warping, it does not explain why the warping of space-time occurs in the first place.
All that has changed with this paper, which if I understand correctly, suggests that what we know as Gravity is really the physical manifestation of Entropy in the universe. Entropy tells us that everything in the universe goes from an high energy state to a lower energy state. Iron rusts, fuel gets burnt, cars slow down due to friction, suns burn out. The whole universe is slowly descending into chaotic randomness.
Another way to look at Entropy is through Shannon's Information Theory, which allow Computer Scientists and Electronics Engineers to calculate the absolute minimum amount of data (bits) that needs to be transmitted in order to overcome Entropy. That's right, everything in Information Theory is measured in Entropy.
This brings us back to the arXiv paper. If I understood it correctly, it is saying that in order for Entropy to work in the universe, the universe needs to "transmit" the mass information of every object to every other object. And Information Theory allows us to calculate the minimum amount of bits required in this "transmission". The author of this paper did this derivation and discovered that the minimum amount of data resolves to a short formula, and that formula is exactly Newton's law of Gravity. The author has not had time to take relativity into consideration in his derivation, but it is anticipated that the solution would indeed be Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.
I'm probably not explaining it clearly, but if you're interested in knowing more please visit The Hammock Physicist's blog on the paper.
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