Physics Talk: Read at Your Own Risk

(my journal entry dated November 6, 2011, a Sunday)

Yes! Almost everyone’s left for Church. Si Tatay lang at ako sa bahay. I have time to write and be alone with my thoughts for at least an hour. I’ve been meaning to write this speculation that came to me regarding gravity—or the lack thereof.

A couple of days ago, I wrote that there’s (probably) no such thing as gravity. There’s only friction. I searched the internet about friction and so far, I’m becoming more and more convinced that there’s only friction working to keep all particles in the universe in stable motion.

If I were to re-state Newton’s universal law of gravitation*, I’d probably go:

“Every particle in the universe is in constant contact with every other particle in the universe, and these particles are in constant and perpetual motion kept that way by the force of friction that particles exert upon each other, keeping the balance among them.”

I guess it needs a little finetuning. An equation of some sort.

At first glance, it seems implausible (naks!) to go beyond Newton’s concepts and principles. But Einstein did that, and on a larger scale, he is right. I think that the force of friction is the one measure that we can establish as a constant, just as the speed of light is held constant throughout the universe.

Specifically, the constant I’m talking about would be atomic friction (unless there’s a smaller, more basic, more consistently dense element out there whose frictional force should replace Newton’s universal gravitational constant). Yabang e, ‘no?

This frictional constant could be multiplied to the masses (m1 and m2?) of the particles involved. Medyo nonlinear nga lang ang computation nito (naks! May pa-nonlinear-nonlinear pa akong nalalaman, e, hehe!), but somehow it gives us a hint on how our world (or our universe) is a self-stabilizing, self-organizing system (SOS), as Dr. Nancy Andreasen used the term in her book “The Creative Brain”—love that book!

It means that when something happens to one particle in the universe, there is a chain reaction triggered as the shift in frictional force among the rest of the particles takes effect.

Now, the question of gravity being nonexistent, or rather explained away by friction: The constant motion and friction involved between the Earth and the moon and the Sun, etc.—is it what keeps us “stuck” or “grounded,” since the resulting force between, say, the Earth and the moon keeps us in check?

I’m not sure yet if this can be proved, but from this assumption, can we say that one’s weight varies when he’s on different surfaces of the planet? Are areas where there’s direct contact between the Earth and the moon affect an Earthling’s weight that is heavier (or lighter)? Hmm….

Frankly, as much as I’m excited about this, I don’t find the urgency to prove it. I mean, I’m not that enthusiastic about coming up with mathematical proof of it. I still have a lot to learn about Physics and forces, etc. Besides, people won’t even take a second glance at this because I’m not even a Physics grad. I’ll just relax a bit here and probably read some more. Chapter!

*Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitational Constant: Every particle in the universe tends to attract every other particle in the universe with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the two particles involved and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.