Newton's Assumptions

Newton is such an iconic figure in physics, and so many of his theorems have been proven right, that it's by now largely forgotten that he made several bold shortcuts in his time, especially when it comes to inertia and gravity.

His greatest unproven assertion is that there's such a thing as mass, and that this property of matter applies equally to gravity and inertia. However, mass has never been found or detected. All we ever measure is either inertia, which is the tendency of matter to resist changes to motion, and gravity which is an attracting force between neutral bodies. No-one ever measured mass. It's either inertia or gravity.

Also unproven is his assertion that gravity is universally the same everywhere, that gravity is independent of other factors than mass, and that gravity is a directionless monopole that acts with equal force in all directions. All of this is merely assumed to be true because Newton happened to believe it to be so. However, there are by now sufficiently many observations to cast doubt on these assumptions.

All sorts of problems are emerging. Our planet is believed to have a super-dense core. Our planet cannot possibly be growing, despite ample evidence of expansion. Mars is believed to have a relatively fluffy core. Comets are believed to be snowballs, despite of their rocky appearance. Galaxies are full of dark matter that defies detection. The list of weirdness is long, and it's all due to a refusal to challenges some of Newton's assumptions.

The way I get around these problems is to break mass into its two detectable components, namely inertia and gravity, and to treat gravity as something dependent on charge in addition to matter. I'm also skeptical to the assumption that gravity acts as a directionless monopole. It seems intuitively more reasonable to believe that gravity has at least some directional component to it. Matter at the other side of our planet is not acting on me completely unhampered by intervening matter. There might not be much interference. But it seems almost inconceivable that intervening matter has no impact at all.

Once we embrace this thought, we see that Newton's shell theorem no longer applies unconditionally to gravity. The perceived center of gravity can be closer to us than the geometrical center of our planet. We get a center of gravity that depends on various factors, such as the thickness of Earth's crust and the position from which gravity is measured. Gravity anomalies and near Earth gravity oddities become easier to explain.

If we allow for charge and capacitance to play a role in gravity, controversial positions such as the hollow and expanding Earth model, become easier to defend. We don't need to invent mechanisms in which super-dense matter is being created out of virtually nothing. Surface gravity increases with Earth's expansion, due to an increase in charge and/or a perceive center of gravity coming closer to the surface.

We also find simple explanations for why Mars and comets are lacking in gravity, and why galaxies spin the way they do. There's no longer any need to invoke dark matter. An increase in capacitance and charge over time is all that's required.

None of this is in any way disrespectful of Newton. He remains the genius that he was. After all, charge and capacitance were poorly understood in his time, and he cannot be blamed for not spotting relationships that he couldn't possibly have known about. Nor can we blame him for having made assumptions about mass and gravity, and some overly sterile premises for his Shell theorem. He knew perfectly well that he was making bold assumptions. It's not his fault that we have taken these assumptions and turned them into dogma, and that we've done this to the point that we spend enormous resources looking for elusive mass particles and dark matter.

Sir Isaac Newton 

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