Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum This is a different take on what gravity is

Maybe it's kind of reversed. The natural state for everything is in freefall. If our acceleration is changed to something that's not freefall then a force has to be continually applied to keep us in that unnatural state. Say the reaction force of the earth pushing up on our feet.

Maybe Newton's laws should be changed to "An object will always be in a state of freefall unless acted on by a force"

Freefall can include linear motion too, like a rock flying through space or the moon orbiting the earth.

I like that. It's exactly right: "always be in a state of freefall" = "always follow a timelike geodesic". Ín other words, unless acted upon by a force, the vector of the object is determined solely by the geometry of space-time.

I like it too, but it still leaves unanswered the question as to how the geometry of spacetime is altered without energy being transferred/used.

I hope you're not shifting towards McCutcheon's "expansion theory".
He maintains that what we experience as gravity is the result of the constant expansion of all matter. We "drop" something and it stay where it is and the Earth's surface comes up and hits it. Now, that really is a different take on gravity!

Nobody has more than a clue. Perhaps the beginning of the answer, from Frank Wilczek:

“How is it possible to construct heavy objects out of objects that weigh nothing?,” he asks. Only by “creating mass out of pure energy.” These particles are essentially “excitations in otherwise empty space.”

- Which, again, comes back to m=E/c2

“That suggests something …beautiful and poetic: the masses of particles [such quarks and gluons] are not like, or similar to or metaphorically suggested by — they are the tones or frequencies of vibration patterns in dynamical voids.”

- Sounds like M-Theory doesn't it. And the bottom line:

“in cosmology, we meet our match, and don’t know what’s going on.”

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/Science/Physics/The-Universe-is-a-Strange-Place/15576