Weighty matters

sandcastler · July 2010

What on Earth is going on with the theory of gravity?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html

cool the kid · July 2010

I would have to subscribe to find out

xlizellx · July 2010

whoa, crazy stuff. Who knows though -- if Newton was proved wrong by Einstein, why not this guy showing Einstein to be wrong..

sandcastler · July 2010

“For me gravity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Verlinde [....]

In the third para of the Times article, the link to his controversial essay does work. Look at the top right side of the linked page. The PDF download. Don't need a subscription.

sandcastler · July 2010

(Not pretending I understand string theory. I don’t.)

carnivore · July 2010

xlizellx wrote: whoa, crazy stuff. Who knows though -- if Newton was proved wrong by Einstein, why not this guy showing Einstein to be wrong..

It's not so much Newton being proved "wrong" by Einstein, but that Einstein provided a much broader perspective, within which Newton's laws are a close approximation that apply in the "special case" of almost everything we observe in normal everyday life.

lnelson · July 2010

"Dr. Verlinde is not an obvious candidate to go off the deep end."

"He made his first big splash as a graduate student when he invented Verlinde Algebra and the Verlinde formula, which are important in string theory, the so-called theory of everything, which posits that the world is made of tiny wriggling strings."

Can someone explain how a person who posits that the words is made of tiny incomprehensible wriggling strings is the exact type of person you'd expect to go off the deep end?

jeffrey · July 2010

It may not actually be a deep end.

Perhaps all of its contents are visible on the surface.

Weighty matters

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