Since my thread has hit a lag, I thought I would once again reintroduce my current endeavor of an attempt to reconcile gravity with light. I really would appreciate any comments or suggestions regarding this process. So let me post the similiarities and differences once again. [edit] Parallels between electrostatics and gravity Coulomb's law, which describes the interaction of electric charges:
is similar to the Newtonian gravitation law:
This suggests similarities between the electric field
E and the gravitational field
g, so sometimes mass is called "gravitational charge".
Similarities between electrostatic and gravitational forces:
- Both act in a vacuum.
- Both are central and conservative.
- Both obey an inverse-square law (both are inversely proportional to square of r).
- Both propagate with finite speed c.
Differences between electrostatic and gravitational forces:
- Electrostatic forces are much greater than gravitational forces (by about 1036 times).
- Gravitational forces are attractive for like charges, whereas electrostatic forces are repulsive for like charges.
- There are no negative gravitational charges (no negative mass) while there are both positive and negative electric charges. This difference combined with previous implies that gravitational forces are always attractive, while electrostatic forces may be either attractive or repulsive.
- Electric charge is invariant while relativistic mass isn't