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Posted

My friend Jerry has been working on a theory of the universe for most of his adult life. I don't know nearly enough to judge whether he's onto something important or not. If anyone would like to take a look at his theory (maybe just look at a couple of videos) and give me a little feedback I'd really appreciate it. His website is Comedy-Recycling Theory of the Entire Known Universe.

 

Thanks in advance.

Posted

Yeah, he's got several videos now. His latest are:

 

An Experiment in Gravity

YouTube - An Experiment in Gravity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRfKxm5JAMo

 

The Great Attractor

YouTube - The Great Attractor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1PvVL1U2Ig

 

Curvature IS the Real Cause of Gravity

YouTube - Curvature IS the Real Cause of Gravity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWTXgULk6_U

 

Did you view any of them?

Posted

Hello, DU. Welcome to Hypography.

 

From the first couple minutes of the first video the conclusion is made that a ball dropped down a hole to earth’s center would be accelerated by gravity toward a point at the core / mantle boundary. From this alone I can tell you, and I’m sorry if I sound blunt, this theory could not be seriously considered by mainstream physics.

 

If you dropped a ball down a well which extended to earth’s center it would fall all the way down and settle at the center. At any point inside or outside the earth a mass feels the force of gravity caused by the earth accelerating it toward Earth’s center. Newton, who first discovered the most basic nature of gravity, proved this using geometry and the universal law of gravitation published in Principia over 300 years ago. The theorems (LXX and LXXI) are quoted and explained here:

 

Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical ... - Google Books

 

Different proofs can be found, for example using calculus:

 

Gravitational field due to rigid bodies

 

and general relativity further affirms this aspect of gravity. With 300 years of evidence and good theoretical predictions and confirmations, I don’t see how any theory of gravity proposing that a ball dropped freely through the earth settles at the core / mantle boundary could be seriously considered.

 

~modest

Posted

Does anyone think a difference in density of the earth's composition (e.g. if the earth was an iron ball covered in styrofoam (or a styrofoam ball covered in iron) would affect how a ball would fall.

 

Also, has anyone had a chance to check out his ideas on curvature causing gravity? I was talking with Jerry on Friday night (hopefully I can get him into this forum soon!) and he was saying that understanding curvature was key to understanding the rest of the theory.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

Posted
Does anyone think a difference in density of the earth's composition (e.g. if the earth was an iron ball covered in styrofoam (or a styrofoam ball covered in iron) would affect how a ball would fall.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

 

This idea is basically what the cold core model thread is about, a dense mantle and less dense core, cannot happen that way, no way no how. dense sinks to the core lighter elements rise to the top. Even if the earth was never really liquid the heat and pressure would still cause this migration.

Posted
Does anyone think a difference in density of the earth's composition (e.g. if the earth was an iron ball covered in styrofoam (or a styrofoam ball covered in iron) would affect how a ball would fall.

 

The ball acts the same, both: outside a Styrofoam covered iron ball, and an iron covered Styrofoam ball—so long as the total mass is the same in both cases.

 

A point outside of a sphere is gravitationally attracted to the center of the sphere in a manner proportional to the total mass of the sphere regardless of how the inside of the sphere is arranged (so long as it is spherically symmetric). This means, if we know the total mass of the earth then we know how a ball outside the earth will act regardless of the density of the different layers of the earth. As wikipedia says:

 

In this way it can be shown that an object with a spherically-symmetric distribution of mass exerts the same gravitational attraction on external bodies as if all the object's mass were concentrated at a point at its centre. (This is not generally true for non-spherically-symmetrical bodies.)...

 

* The mass located at a radius r < r
0
causes the same force at r
0
as if all of the mass enclosed within a sphere of radius r
0
were concentrated at the center of the mass distribution (as noted above).

 

A ball inside the earth, on the other hand, will act differently in the two cases. For example, at the iron / Styrofoam boundary in the the case of the iron core, the gravitational force would be very strong. In the case of a Styrofoam core at the boundary the force would be very weak.

 

In both cases (iron core / Styrofoam shell or Styrofoam core / iron shell) if you drilled a hole through the earth and dropped a ball down, it would settle at the center of the planet.

 

Also, has anyone had a chance to check out his ideas on curvature causing gravity? I was talking with Jerry on Friday night (hopefully I can get him into this forum soon!) and he was saying that understanding curvature was key to understanding the rest of the theory.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

 

I haven't looked at it.

 

The best theory of gravity which physics has is general relativity. It models the 'force' of gravity as the curvature of spacetime.

 

~modest

Posted

Welcome to hypography, DaddyUnit! :hihi:

If anyone would like to take a look at his theory (maybe just look at a couple of videos) and give me a little feedback I'd really appreciate it. His website is Comedy-Recycling Theory of the Entire Known Universe.

I listened to the video “an experiment in gravity”.

 

The first unusual claim in it, that, that a ball dropped down a shaft through the earth would stop accelerating when it reached the core-mantle boundary, is correct only if we assume that the core of the Earth is hollow – that is, contains a vacuum. This is strongly contradicted by seismic data (measurements of the speed of a sound signal traveling through the Earth’s various interior regions). That gravity within the Earth can behave the way the video describes if its core is hollow can be shown mathematically, or via simple numeric simulation such as the one in this post.

 

The claim that the “curvature of gravity” – I assume what’s being referred to here is what’s know in conventional terms as the gradient, or slope, of the gravitational potential – is the same at the center of the Earth as it would be if the Earth is not there, is correct. A ball at rest in a chamber at the center of the Earth would experience no acceleration due to the Earth’s mass, just as it would if the Earth was not there. However, the gradient of the gravitational potential (or any scalar field) is not the same thing as its magnitude. The potential energy of a test particle at a particular point – the ball in the video’s examples – is directly proportional to the magnitude of the field at that point, not its gradient. This appears to the central misconception on which most of the video’s claims are based.

 

The next claim, that a ball far from the Earth traveling in the Earth’s orbit has the same gravitational potential energy as one at the center of the Earth, is wrong both by mathematically rigorous theory, and common sense. Common sense tells us that we could give add a very small amount of energy to ball far from Earth to give it an orbit slightly different from the Earth that would result in it striking the Earth, and that, due to its greater GPE being converted to kinetic energy, it would hit much harder than a ball down a deep hole.

 

The speaker engages in a bit of, IMHO, bogus rhetoric in asking “will you believe the world’s greatest experts on gravity when they tell you that the ball will ... drop all the way to the center of the Earth ... or will you believe the experiment you’ve just done [tossing a ball]?” That a ball tossed up falls back down doesn’t contradict mainstream theory, either modern of a couple hundred years ago. Tossing a ball into the air doesn’t demonstrate how (at what velocity at each point) a ball would fall through a shaft through the center of the Earth. This rhetorical tactic, claiming that “experts” are deceiving “us” from obvious, simple truths through “textbooks” and other assertions of authorities, is common in pseudoscience, an ad hominem fallacy, and doesn’t bode well for the credibility of its author.

 

A glance at the “Comedy-Recycling Theory of the Entire Known Universe” website reveals similar misunderstandings of introductory classical and modern physics. I recommend its author, Jay Reynard, acquire an understanding of conventional physics to at least minimal level of competency, rather than brag “Jerry is fully unqualified academically to think-of, laugh-at, or comment-upon anyone else’s theory of the universe, but that hasn’t stopped him.” Self-lead or academic science education is, I think, essential in overcoming the many errors that one can fall into without it, and if conducted well, no hindrance to ones imagination or ability to entertain and express alternatives to mainstream theories. In my experience, the most imaginative and exciting alternate theories come from the best conventionally educated scientists.

Posted

I watched the videos and I admit I had to think about it. But I think the confusion comes from sphere vs. say a flat layer. If you're standing on one side of a ten-foot thick, concrete disk (in a vacuum) with a whole in the center and you drop a ball, it will eventually equalize at the center (assuming your own mass doesn't deter the ball from passing repeatedly through the hole.) But in the case of a sphere, and a hole going from the surface to the center, there is mass "beneath" the center pulling on the ball also.

Posted
if you drilled a hole through the earth and dropped a ball down, it would settle at the center of the planet.
Gradually, due to friction, but if there is no air in the hole and this is along the rotation axis and the ball doesn't knock the sides, it goes on oscillating between the antipodes. The radial density distribution does make a difference in the exact motion. If the density is uniform it will be sinusoidal and also have the same period of a circular orbit of the same radius. If the planet is hollow, no acceleration inside the shell so velocity is constant there; in the limit of a thin and infinitely dense shell the motion would be the same as elastic bouncing back and forth (triangular waveform).
Posted

Hey thanks to everyone for all the very positive, constructive and thought-provoking comments AND for giving my friend Jerry's ideas your attention and consideration.

 

Jerry just posted a follow-on commentary to his gravity experiment on his blog at C-R Theory Blog.

 

I'm trying to convince Jerry to sign up at this great site and engage in some of this conversation directly.

 

Thanks again.

  • 1 year later...
Posted

Hi Science Enthusiasts,

 

I'm posting for my friend Jerry who just posted a new entry on his blog. I don't do this every time he posts on his blog, but he's very excited about a new idea he has about how Black Holes merge and has been working on this particular post for quite some time.

 

Even if you don't agree with his theory (or understand his theory...which is where my non-scientific mind is trapped), you may enjoy his perspective and his humorous writing style. Here are a couple of bits that may pique your interest. And as always, thank you for providing this forum for the exchange of ideas and the respectful friendly attitude.

 

Jerry's blog is available at http://blog.cr-theory.org/

 

"I believe I can now uniquely and simply answer the second profound insight, and explain why certain supermassive Black-Holes C-R have been detected, either: not at the exact centers of their galaxy, or in a few cases, have been found to be exiting a galaxy at a great speed."

 

"Conventional theory has no good reason to expect that one supermassive Black-Hole C-R should be kicked-out of a galaxy after an attempted merger. Using a new line of reasoning, the C-R theory can now provide a simple answer at to the why's and the how's."

 

"In the conventional thinking about black holes, this 'special new condition' of storing newly-infallen matter in a 'set-apart zone', where the escape velocity is greater than the speed-of-light would not be critical, as all new matter is expected to be eaten in an electrically neutral state, and virtually nothing would be expected to change for the eaten matter. Only the C-R theory claims that this special storage method establishes the 'forbidding any interaction at the speed-of-light, anywhere within'."

 

"Imagine two small, plastic, 'kiddie-type' swimming pools, each one exactly filled to capacity, bulging to the last drop, with scalding hot water. Now imagine that one or both of them get the idea to merge, or that they try to combine their contents, and make one even larger-sized swimming pool. In their attempt to merge, the inconvenient fact here is that each pool is already at it's full capacity, and neither one can expand enough to take-in even one-more-drop of the other's contents. [because of the uniqueness of the circumstances, as we have set-it-up.]"

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