It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?
All of the tiny positive forces of all the atoms in the earth add up
to a big gravity force (which is nothing more than a positive
electrostatic force). What is the evidence that gravity and the
electrostatic force are different? The force equations are similar
except in magnitude. What else is similar or different?

FrankH wrote:
It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?
All of the tiny positive forces of all the atoms in the earth add up
to a big gravity force (which is nothing more than a positive
electrostatic force). What is the evidence that gravity and the
electrostatic force are different? The force equations are similar
except in magnitude. What else is similar or different?

I used to think this too. Dick Tracy comics had Diet Smith's
electromagnetic space coupe that somehow repelled gravity.

The shielding of the nucleus by electrons may be significant at very
close range (atomic distances) but out here in the macroscopic world the
electrostatic forces all cancel because neutral atoms have a net charge
of zero.

--
Joe Legris

On Sat, 25 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Consider the gravitional acceleration of a proton and an electron - the
acceleration is the same for each, and their masses are very different, so
the force on each is very different (proportional to the mass). The
magnitude of their charges are the same - can't be electrostatic.

Also one sees that neutrons, photons, etc are affected by gravity.

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

Joseph Legris wrote in message ...
FrankH wrote:
It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?
All of the tiny positive forces of all the atoms in the earth add up
to a big gravity force (which is nothing more than a positive
electrostatic force). What is the evidence that gravity and the
electrostatic force are different? The force equations are similar
except in magnitude. What else is similar or different?

I used to think this too. Dick Tracy comics had Diet Smith's
electromagnetic space coupe that somehow repelled gravity.

The shielding of the nucleus by electrons may be significant at very
close range (atomic distances) but out here in the macroscopic world the
electrostatic forces all cancel because neutral atoms have a net charge
of zero.

Perhaps the word 'shielding' is too strong. How do we know that
neutral atoms have a net charge of zero? Did we go out and measure it
experimentally, or did someone just say that a proton has this much
charge and an electron has this much charge and so they should cancel
each other out? I think the only way a electron and proton could fully
cancel themselves out all the time is if the proton and electron took
up exactly the same space and they didn't move. This would insure that
the fields would overlap perfectly to cause a zero net charge.
Otherwise, if the electron is allowed to move about the proton, you
would see that for any particular point in space, the charge was not
zero because the electron was either closer or farther away than the
proton. If the electron got stripped away from the proton, then you
would definitely see a positive charge, and I would think this would
have to happen in a sufficient quantity of normal earth-like matter.
So for a large quantity of so-called neutral atoms, the overall charge
an any particular volume of space may still be zero, but this doesn't
automatically mean zero fields eminating from this space becuase the
electrons still move relative to the fixed protons. Or perhaps most
normal matter is missing some electrons. They are not tightly bound on
the outer shells, leaving enough atoms to produce a net positive
field.

Timo Nieminen wrote in message ...
On Sat, 25 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Consider the gravitional acceleration of a proton and an electron - the
acceleration is the same for each, and their masses are very different, so
the force on each is very different (proportional to the mass). The
magnitude of their charges are the same - can't be electrostatic.

Also one sees that neutrons, photons, etc are affected by gravity.

Have we done experiments to verify that the gravitaional acceleration
is the same for a proton and an electron, or did you just assume that.
Experiments done at Stanford suggest that electrons are not effected
by gravity. No acceleration in a gravitational field was found in the
experiment. This is a weird result which may have been caused by other
factors, but my point is that you may be making assumptions about
things we haven't verified experimentally. Neutrons are also effected
by electrostatic fields since there appears to be evidence that they
have dielectric properties which can only be revealed by the
manipulation of electrostatic fields. Whether photons are affected by
gravity is questionable since we have only been able to measure this
effect around large sun-like bodies which obviously have a large
atmosphere around them that would cause light to bend through a normal
density-lensing effect. If you could show light bending around a large
airless asteroid, that might be convincing. Rather than using a proton
and electron as an example, we know that in an airless environment, a
hammer will drop as fast as a feather. It would be an interesting
experiment to show that hammer would be accelerated to a source of
electrostatic charge as fast as a feather in a similar airless
environment.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

Timo Nieminen wrote in message ...
On Sat, 25 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Consider the gravitional acceleration of a proton and an electron - the
acceleration is the same for each, and their masses are very different, so
the force on each is very different (proportional to the mass). The
magnitude of their charges are the same - can't be electrostatic.

Also one sees that neutrons, photons, etc are affected by gravity.

Have we done experiments to verify that the gravitaional acceleration
is the same for a proton and an electron, or did you just assume that.

Don't know of any electron experiments off-hand, but the experiments some
years ago (late '80s?) which suggested that G might not be constant led to
a whole rash of gravity experiments, including some trying to measure any
difference between the gravitational acceleration of protons, neutrons,
and anti-protons (one theory predicted that anti-protons should accelerate
at 2g). No differences found.

To a reasonable degree of accuracy, this is easily tested. Compare the
weights of water and heavy water - do those extra neutrons make a
difference?

Millikan's famous oil-drop experiment also tells much about neutral and
charged matter in uniform fields. Various other EM levitation and trapping
experiments tell you exactly how large a field or field gradient is needed
to produce a force equal to the gravitational force.

Gravitational acceleration of neutral atoms and ions is the same, again
experimentally well-tested.

Finally, the strength of electrostatic forces between neutral atoms can
be, and has been, measured - do some reading about van der Waals forces.

Neutrons are also effected
by electrostatic fields since there appears to be evidence that they
have dielectric properties which can only be revealed by the
manipulation of electrostatic fields.

How large is the effect? Gravitational acceleration is the same as for a
proton.

Whether photons are affected by
gravity is questionable since we have only been able to measure this
effect around large sun-like bodies which obviously have a large
atmosphere around them that would cause light to bend through a normal
density-lensing effect. If you could show light bending around a large
airless asteroid, that might be convincing.

Not questionable at all. Multiple-frequency measurements, including RF
measurements as well as optical are very convincing.

Rather than using a proton
and electron as an example, we know that in an airless environment, a
hammer will drop as fast as a feather. It would be an interesting
experiment to show that hammer would be accelerated to a source of
electrostatic charge as fast as a feather in a similar airless
environment.

Try it and see. You don't even need an airless environment if you are
content to measure force rather than acceleration (no motion required, so
air resistance is not a problem). Check out Coulomb's measurements.

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

In message , FrankH
writes
It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Wouldn't that be _repulsive_?

--
Richard Herring

FrankH wrote:
It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time.

This effect is called the Van der Waal forces. It falls off as 1/r^6.
This is the wrong form for gravity; therefore, the answer to your
question that I deleted is no.

Richard Herring ] wrote in message ...
In message , FrankH
writes
It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Wouldn't that be _repulsive_?

If all matter had a positive charge, then you would think that
everything should repel each other. However, the positive charge I'm
talking about is tiny compared with the covalent bonds formed by
electron sharing between atoms. So neutral atoms left to themselves
may repel, but once they're stuck together, the positive charge still
remains, but isn't enough to break the covalent bonds and cause the
atoms to repel.

Timo Nieminen wrote in message ...
On Sun, 27 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

Timo Nieminen wrote in message ...
On Sat, 25 Jul 2003, FrankH wrote:

It has been suggested that all matter has a slight positive
electrostatic charge because the protons are fixed and the electrons
can move far enough away from the nucleus to allow the positive
nucleus to be unshielded some of the time. If this is true, then
couldn't gravity just be this residual positive electrostatic force?

Consider the gravitional acceleration of a proton and an electron - the
acceleration is the same for each, and their masses are very different, so
the force on each is very different (proportional to the mass). The
magnitude of their charges are the same - can't be electrostatic.

Also one sees that neutrons, photons, etc are affected by gravity.

Have we done experiments to verify that the gravitaional acceleration
is the same for a proton and an electron, or did you just assume that.

Don't know of any electron experiments off-hand, but the experiments some
years ago (late '80s?) which suggested that G might not be constant led to
a whole rash of gravity experiments, including some trying to measure any
difference between the gravitational acceleration of protons, neutrons,
and anti-protons (one theory predicted that anti-protons should accelerate
at 2g). No differences found.

To a reasonable degree of accuracy, this is easily tested. Compare the
weights of water and heavy water - do those extra neutrons make a
difference?

Millikan's famous oil-drop experiment also tells much about neutral and
charged matter in uniform fields. Various other EM levitation and trapping
experiments tell you exactly how large a field or field gradient is needed
to produce a force equal to the gravitational force.

In doing more research on what it means for the electrostatic and
gravity force to have the same equation form, I would think that you
would expect that particles with different masses would have exactly
the same acceleration under an electrostatic field. A=F/M and the
F=Force created by residual positive charges would be proportional to
M=Mass (the more mass, then more force) which would make
A=Acceleration a constant regardless of mass just like gravity.
Gravity and electrostaic interaction are so similar that some students
understand electrostatics by understanding how objects behave under
gravitational fields.

Gravitational acceleration of neutral atoms and ions is the same, again
experimentally well-tested.

Finally, the strength of electrostatic forces between neutral atoms can
be, and has been, measured - do some reading about van der Waals forces.

Neutrons are also effected
by electrostatic fields since there appears to be evidence that they
have dielectric properties which can only be revealed by the
manipulation of electrostatic fields.

How large is the effect? Gravitational acceleration is the same as for a
proton.

Whether photons are affected by
gravity is questionable since we have only been able to measure this
effect around large sun-like bodies which obviously have a large
atmosphere around them that would cause light to bend through a normal
density-lensing effect. If you could show light bending around a large
airless asteroid, that might be convincing.

Not questionable at all. Multiple-frequency measurements, including RF
measurements as well as optical are very convincing.
I would think that all electromagnetic radition would show some
lensing effect when travelling through an atmosphere. When RF or light
waves hit a dense atmosphere, it slows, and when it exits, it speeds
back up and exits at a different angle. This is why it important to
show the effect around an object which has no atmosphere to interfere
with the results.


Rather than using a proton
and electron as an example, we know that in an airless environment, a
hammer will drop as fast as a feather. It would be an interesting
experiment to show that hammer would be accelerated to a source of
electrostatic charge as fast as a feather in a similar airless
environment.

Try it and see. You don't even need an airless environment if you are
content to measure force rather than acceleration (no motion required, so
air resistance is not a problem). Check out Coulomb's measurements.

Measuring force is not sufficient. It is the identical acceleration
that you're after and according to my new research, the hammer and the
feather should be accelerated at exactly the same rate towards a
charge source, just like gravity. So gravity is looking a lot like the
electrostatic force.

But if it is this simple, why hasn't anyone figured it out. There
still must be some big obvious objection that I don't understand.