A person is an example of a direct abstraction. Anyone can go out in the street and point to a representative of a person.
A society on the other hand is a pure abstraction. There are no direct representatives of society. The word does not represent an instance, but a complex interaction of persons. A bunch of people form a society when they interact purposefully with each other.
This logic extends to physics. We have various types of matter. We can point to specimens. Matter is a direct abstraction. Matter is "real" in the sense that we can touch it and see it.
Mass on the other hand is something that we have never seen. It is an attribute of matter. It can be measured, but it has never been seen or even identified as anything but a property of matter.
Mass appears to be a pure abstraction. It appears to be the result of something more fundamental.
To further confuse the matter (pun intended), mass comes in two forms. We talk of inertial mass and gravitational mass. These are closely related. When one of these changes the other changes by an exact proportional amount. However, no one has been able to determine whether the two are in fact the same thing, or merely caused by the same thing.
If inertial and gravitational mass are the same thing, we can expect to find a direct representative of mass at some point. Then mass will be a direct abstraction for sure. However, if inertial and gravitational mass are merely caused by the same thing, then that thing may not be mass, but something more fundamental. That would make mass, in all its forms, a pure abstraction, representing complex interactions of something more fundamental.
In the capacitor model of gravity, I make the claim that mass and gravity are independent entities. Yet, when challenged by Bob Ham to produce a formula, I write the following:
F = G() * Mg(q1)Mg(q2)/r^2 - kq1q2/r^3
where
G() is a function with unknown parameters to produce Newton's gravitational constant G
Mg() is gravitational mass calculated from charge
q1 is the total charge of body 1
q2 is total charge of body 2
r is the distance between the bodies
k is a constant used to calibrate the repelling force assumed to exist
This formula is equivalent to Newton's F = GM1M2/r^2, but with variable mass and treating gravity as a dipole rather than mono-pole force.
I'm saying that gravity is independent of mass, yet I express the force in terms of gravitational mass. How can I do that?
The answer is simple. The expression above implies a direct relationship between gravitational mass and charge. The underlying mechanism is caused by charge. Gravitational mass is a pure abstraction, derived from the complex interaction of charge.
From this it follows that inertial mass is a pure abstraction too, also due to the complex interaction of charge.
Matter is made up of charged particles that interact to produce two complex relationships. One of these is inertia, and the other one is gravity. The two phenomena are directly linked, but they are not the same. They are merely caused by the same fundamental entity, and I'm proposing that this fundamental entity is charge.
This means that it is possible to calculate the gravitational pull of a lump of matter by measuring its inertia, not because inertia and gravity are the same thing, but because they are caused by the same thing. Mass is merely a convenient abstraction. All forms of mass are pure abstractions. No one will ever find mass if they were to go and look for a direct representative of it. All they will find are bits of charged matter.
It has been my opinion for some time that mass is charge though my path to this understanding is slightly different than yours. One way in which we perceive mass is in matter density. The greater the mass the greater the density and an analogous example of this is wood. Different species of wood has different densities. Hardwoods like maple or oak have a greater density than soft woods such as pine therefore have greater energy within. Hardwoods are preferred for fireplaces/wood stoves because they burn hotter than pine and leave less of a carbon footprint in your chimney than pine does. And not only will an equivalent size(dimensional not volume or weight, a cube of matter) of hardwood burn hotter than a softwood but it will also burn longer. Thus greater density equals greater mass equals greater energy bound within.
ReplyDeleteAs for your equation (F = G() * Mg(q1)Mg(q2)/r^2 - kq1q2/r^3), I am not a mathematician though I am trying to understand the language.
Force = Gravity
Massgrams(quantity 1) x Massgrams(quantity 2) / r^2(?)~what is r?
Good article.
Thank you for pointing out the lack of explanation to my formula. I've now included the explanation in the text. As you can see, it's a variation on Newton's formula F = GM1M2/r^2 in which mass is a function of charge.
DeleteDense matter is heavier than diffuse matter, so density is definitely a part of the overall picture. In my view, it is the density of charged particles in matter that ultimately determines its mass.