A reading of the article “Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe” by Wal Thornhill. First episode of a two-part story arc. Narrated by David Harrison, proprietor of Stickman On Stone.
The simple fact is that we have no concept of why matter manifests with mass.
But when we apply force to a body, how is that force transferred to overcome inertia? The answer is ‘electrically’ by the repulsion between the outer electrons in the atoms closest to the points of contact. The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass strongly suggests that the force of gravity is a manifestation of the electric force.
We missed a chance to include electricity in astronomy in the early 1900s. Birkeland was performing his electrical ‘little Earth,’ or Terrella, experiments in Norway, and Gauss and Weber were discovering the electrical interactions of matter.
Today, physicists labour under misconceptions about the nature of matter and space; the relationship between matter, mass and gravity; the electrical nature of stars and galaxies; and the size, history and age of the universe.
So when astrophysicists turn to particle physicists to solve their intractable problems and particle physicists use it as an excuse for squandering billions of dollars on futile experiments, neither party recognizes that the other discipline is in a parlous state.
