Universality of Newton and Einstein

Verlinde and a group of modern thinkers have come up with a new interpretation of Gravity. The words entropic force are now going around all over the globe to describe the new paradigm. At this stage there is no experimental way I am aware of to debunk the old ideas. This is a first try at building the paradigm, and I point out to one experimental opportunity.

From what I understand the new paradigm tells us that space and time are emergent properties; this is a far cry from time as a river that flows independently of maybe even the wishes of God.

The only entropic force I was aware of was diffusion. When I was an engineering student I was fascinated by the idea that particles will move from where there are more to where there are less. Such a simple and deep idea. All particles have an equal tendency to go left or right through a hole in a membrane inside a box. If all are to the left say, then there is a tendency for particles to migrate in the long term more likely to the right than to the left of the box, just because there are less particles going from right to left. All of them are in the left in the beginning!

Of course when the number of particles in both sides of the box is the same, the flow stops.

Somehow, Verlinde reminds us, in thermodynamic situations these random statistical motions produce something we can call a force, an entropic force; and even more surprisingly, he says that gravity is just like that, a mere thermodynamic effect. To make his point he puts together in a new way a set of ideas created by several thinkers during the past thirty or so years: ideas by Jacob Bekenstein, Steve Hawking, Bill Unruh, Gerard 't Hooft, and others.

Do I believe him?

Not yet. I have to digest it better; but here I write one possible test.

If Newton and Einstein didn't discover fundamental laws, then there must be alternatives to explain the massive amount of experimental facts being collected by astronomers right now. More than at any time in history, we are finding out about extrasolar planets, missing mass, and accelerating supernovae.

Profs. Jacob Bekenstein and Mordechai Milgrom in Israel are very busy proposing their own Theory of Gravity, which explains the fast velocities of stars at the edge of all galaxies. Instead of proposing new dark matter, or other such dark materials, they say, we got the gravity force law wrong for galactic size distances.

These new, so called MOND equations, may also have a thermodynamic explanation, if anybody finds this explanation, he or she, can claim Newton's and Einstein's chairs, in Cambridge and Mercer.

Mike Green, and Ed Witten: move over, here come new Kings.

Maybe I can start a betting contest. What about Erik Verlinde, and Thanu Padmanabhan, for consideration to those posts?

Proposals are accepted.

The King is dead, long live the King!

For those that don't know me, I have a tendency to exagerate, that way I look at a wide enough field of possibilities.