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I'm the host of this little science show. 
38:24 It’s one of those, like, you have to pay to get the literature …
Not at all! You can read the full text pre-print here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.2326
39:41 If gravity turns out to be emergent property … of space its self, it will absolutely change the way we look at the universe.
Einstein did just this back in 1916, and it indeed changed the way we look at the universe!
In General Relativity, gravitation is an emergent property due from the curvature of spacetime in the presence of mass/energy.
The amazing thing is that today, nearly a century later, people like you, Justin, remain in the dark.
Einstein wrote a book for the layperson called Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.
Your continued insistence that “gravity isn’t a force” is piss in the wind, and has been for over 90 years!
I’ve called you out on this before, yet you continue to insist on arguing semantics over the word “force”!
You may be surprised to find that Verlinde himself refers to gravity as a force in the abstract of his seminal paper:
Gravity can be a force, particle, wave, or emergent property, not all at once, but each in their respective theoretical context.
41:50 It’s going to take a lot of unlearning.
This is your own delusional fiction, Justin.
The demon physicist who plugs his fingers into his ears upon hearing a theory that challenges his long-held beliefs is nothing more than a product of your imagination.
Your hand-waving and false claims of oppression towards new ideas is downright offensive!
None of the theoretical physicists I have met, spoken with, or communicated with online have anything but the highest reverence for fresh, new ideas.
This is their life-blood!
It is outrageous that you would accuse an unnamed, vaguely-defined community of having to do “a lot of unlearning”.
Maybe you should read up on the subject, and do some learning of your own before you criticize the culture of a community you know nothing about.
(Read that on the air, Kirsten, if you would.)
42:23 We still don’t know what [gravity] is.
Nobody has had the right to say this since 1687 when Newton published the Principia!
Who are you speaking for, anyway? All theoretical physicists? What gives you the right?
Stop spouting ignorant nonsense, you sound like a creationist! “B-b-but it’s only a theory!”
43:55 You could come up with a Flying Spaghetti monster and create a string theory model that supports it.
It sounds to me like you don’t know two shits about string theory!
String theory isn’t some modeling program that you feed in vague ideas like the FSM.
43:45 You could use String Theory to come up with an example of gravity as an emergent property.
You couldn’t be more wrong!
String theory has not yet been made background independent.
This means that space, time, and gravity are all assumed as part of the framework from the get go.
Therefore, they cannot emerge from the theory its self.
This is one of Smolin’s main objections in his book, The Trouble With Physics.
See if you can spot the glaring self-contradiction!
Astounding. Simply astounding.
45:43 There are possible ways that General Relativity could be worked to agree with Quantum [Mechanics] if gravity is not a force.
Yes, Kirsten, there are many approaches to unification of GR and QM, and some include emergent gravitation.
Instead of allowing Justin’s nonsense, why not examine these roads to Quantum Gravity on air?
Or, maybe talk a little bit about Verlinde’s wonderful paper On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton!
46:04 These are things that physicists are arguing.
This 10 minute segment contained almost ZERO scientific discussion.
None of the “things that physicists are arguing” seemed to have made it into the segment.
Physicists don’t waste time obstinately defending their own personal semantics.
They quickly get down into the technical and, ideally, testable differences between competing theories.
There are good motivations for Verlinde’s theory.
Proving Gravity “isn’t a force”, and supporting the “dark horse” are not to be found among them!
Please, less mindless ranting, more science, please!!
There is so much good stuff you guys could talk about, if only you could get past the unscientific rants!
Awesome counter-rant, Thank You!
“In General Relativity, gravitation is an emergent property due from the curvature of spacetime in the presence of mass/energy.”
Yes yes, agreed… this is why it has puzzles me that we still seek particles and waves to account for this as opposed to a structure of space itself.
“Your continued insistence that “gravity isn’t a force” is piss in the wind, and has been for over 90 years! – I’ve called you out on this before, yet you continue to insist on arguing semantics over the word “force”! You may be surprised to find that Verlinde himself refers to gravity as a force in the abstract of his seminal paper:”
I’m not nearly old enough to have insisted anything for 90 years, but yes it is semantics in some ways.
The Eric Verlinde paper you reference ends with a very direct conclusion statement: “The end of gravity as a fundamental force.”
And quickly compares it to thermodynamics and hydrodynamics…
If you can you imagine us discussing whether or not thermodynamics is a force, then you will understand how arguments for gravity as a force appear to me.
“Gravity can be a force, particle, wave, or emergent property, not all at once, but each in their respective theoretical context.”
Sure, as long as we don’t know what it is, we can conceive of it in multiple ways… once we understand it we will have eliminated some of these.
“This is your own delusional fiction, Justin. – None of the theoretical physicists I have met, spoken with, or communicated with online have anything but the highest reverence for fresh, new ideas.”
I do love my delusional fictions! Which theoretical physicists do you know and talk with? What new ideas are they entertaining? I’ve heard people like Sean Carroll talk up the need for less mainstream ideas, but shoot them down just as quickly and offer none of his own. Lisa Randall was quick to counter me, when I said I don’t believe in gravitons, that they do indeed exist.
I’m not saying that there are physicists who plug fingers into ears upon hearing a theory that challenges beliefs… I’m saying that if no one is teaching, researching or arguing an alternative… what else will the new physicist be working on?
We still don’t know what gravity is.
“Nobody has had the right to say this since 1687 when Newton published the Principia!”
I have the right to say it, and it happens to be true. You seem to be confusing Newtons law of gravity (which I don’t doubt in the least, where it applies) with what I am speaking to which is its mechanism. “Why” it exists. This should alleviate the glare from the apparent later contradiction of saying that we know how it works… i should have clarified this better on the show.
Knowing how something works is one thing, knowing why something works is quite another.
That we can drive a car says we know how it works.
That we can engineer a new car says we know why it works.
Jacksonfly
I’m sure gendou’s heart is in the right place, but I respectfully disagree about the “mindless ranting” complaint.
There are countless resources online and in print, and also via audio/podcasts, television, live lectures and more where we can absorb information about science in close to purely scientific terms: theory, evidence, guesses, conclusion. What we lack is a larger source of discussion on how science relates to real people in the real world, and that includes moral, political, philosophical and religious ramifications.
I need science. I need facts. I also need many views on what that science might mean for life as we understand it, including the human race. Science, the quest for knowledge of the fundamentals of the universe, is one of the most essential and amazing attributes of humanity. But a narrow focus on the facts belittles science; if we don’t work to understand how those facts affect us as living, thinking beings, we marginalize the value of science itself.
Learning the cause is essential. Learning to predict the effects gives us hope. I’m strongly in favor of broader, more frequent discussion of those effects, and I find Dr. Sanford to be an interesting voice.
Jacksonfly: I’m saying that if no one is teaching, researching or arguing an alternative…
This is absurdly wrong, nothing could be farther from the truth!
There are at least 195 citations of Verlinde’s paper!!!
How can you say that no one is researching this “alternative”?
This paper made a huge impact, as it deserved to.
This is what I’m talking about: You’re paranoid, man!
Greg Howard: I find Dr. Sanford to be an interesting voice.
Dr. Sanford is an interesting voice, indeed!
But here, Justin is making incorrect claims about a scientific theory.
I am correcting this false claims.
Greg Howard: But a narrow focus on the facts belittles science
I say that ignorance of facts belittles science.
Can science answer the question “why”?
Justin, please! We’ve gone over this before.
You obviously never watched this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
I’ve posted it for you before.
Science doesn’t answer why questions.
You propose, incorrectly, that Verlinde’s theory is superior to others because it answers “why”.
It may turn out to be superior, but the reason can NEVER be as you argue.
All things being equal, we prefer a theory where laws emerge over one where they are spelled out.
This is a good reason to investigate Verlinde’s theory!
It is positively incorrect to say the one theory explains “why” while the other does not.
They both explain “why”, but in different ways.
I understand that Verlinde’s theory is more satisfactory to you.
That is no reason to slander all other theories involving gravity.
Justin: Imagine us discussing whether or not thermodynamics is a force.
I have no trouble talking about osmotic pressure as the result of a force at appropriate scales.
Your rejection of all but the most radically reductionist scale is unfathomable to me.
Justin: Once we understand [gravity] we will have eliminated some of these.
This is a very tired argument, Justin.
Again you use the mysterious “we” that seems to consist of only you.
Physicists understand gravity just fine.
Rocket designers will never, ever give up Newtonian dynamics.
Cosmologists will never, ever give up General Relativity while studying gravity lensing.
Particle physicists may go between models at different scales of energy.
One of them may be something based on Verlinde’s theory.
This doesn’t mean the other ways of knowing gravity will be eliminated, in practice, or in principle!
This is how science works.
Deal with it.
I must correct a mistake in my previous post.
I said one model particle physicists may use could be based on Verlinde’s theory.
As it turns out, gravity cannot be an entropic force:
Found this today, thought it was applicable to this episode
Experiments Show Gravity Is Not an Emergent Phenomenon
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27102/?p1=blogs
Gendou – you have been an admirable skeptic to my crackpot take on modern physics and so I’m taking this opportunity to lay out the source of my afflicted thinking in terms you are invited to tear into. I don’t propose this thinking lightly, I am well read on the subject and very serious about what I state though entirely uncommitted to its ultimate reality.
To clarify my crack pot physics a bit…
I truly believe, not on faith but on something just as intangible though hopefully more informed in its inception. By intuition of the data of the universe as I have deciphered it… that there is a physical reality of space itself. An absolute space, background space or even in the crudest of terms, a luminiferous ether of space.
I like the abstract concept of string theory… tiny resonating bits of energy resulting in this that or another key component due to its oscillation.
But in my construct the strings represent space itself, space as a conduit through which energy passes.
Light in this concept is a cluster of energy passing from some quantity of strings to another at the maximum transfer rate at which the strings cans transmit the energy from one string to another… the speed of light.
The vacuum of space, not a local vacuum within a solar system or galaxy or even within our universe… but a pre big bang universe emerges… one of latent strings not excited by any energy at all. Within this void, the stings space is latent, uniformly dispersed.
Add energy and things begin to change. There are strings that are “buzy” with energy and those that are not.
Add enough energy, say a planet, a star, a galaxy… and there are so many “buzy” strings that a direction of density begins to emerge.
From this perspective I see gravity not as a force, but as a preferred direction… a path of least resistance.
Picture a graphic of a gravity well… the cells drawn in such images are larger the further you go from the wells bottom (inverse square of gravity at a distance)…
If you turn this image into a 3 dimensional model in your mind you will have a sphere with small cells in the middle and large cells on the outside. A portrait of density, in my view it is an active consumption of available string space and creates a disparity of available directions for motion and is what we account for as mass. (motion in this case being available conduit for energy to be transferred through string space, limitations of motion = mass
A few points I hope to be given, if only grudgingly and with room for connotation and disclaimer…
Ahead of research and theory in such areas I have predicted the following…
Black holes do not trap light indefinitely… they only occupy it, diffuse it or redirect it…
There is no need for such things as gravity waves, Higgs boson, or the graviton.
Dark matter is an illusion, there is no mystery matter behind it.
And gravity is an emergent property of space, not a force.
These are all predictions I have made on the show that have yet to be refuted.
Jacksonfly: Dark matter is an illusion, there is no mystery matter behind it.
First off, I object to the words “illusion” and “mystery”.
You avoid using the language of science, and as a result your language is CRIPPLINGLY vague!
The term “Dark Matter” refers to a real, quantified, physical phenomena.
Baryonic (normal) matter cannot explain this phenomena.
Whatever the eventual explanation, it may describe previously undetected mass-energy.
Or, it may be something completely different.
It sounds like you predict the later.
This is an open question in astrophysics!
So, I offer you this wager:
Jacksonfly: Gravity is an emergent property of space, not a force.
The theory, presented by Verlinde, has been refuted by experiment. [1]
You can NO LONGER say this prediction is “yet to be refuted”.
Jacksonfly: Black holes do not trap light indefinitely. They only occupy it, diffuse it or redirect it.
Again, we have a severe problem of messy language.
At first, it sounds like you don’t understand how black holes work.
The event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer.
Any light that crosses the event horizon of a black hole is lost to anyone remaining outside.
Then again, maybe you don’t believe black hole can be formed at all!
The most profound “refutation” of this would be the theory of General Relativity.
Black holes are formed as a consequence of General Relativity when heavy stars collapse.
To say otherwise is to directly contradict General Relativity, one of the pillars of physics.
You CAN NOT say a prediction has “yet to be refuted” when it is in DIRECT CONTRADICTION with one of the PILLARS OF PHYSICS!
Jacksonfly: There is no need for such things as gravity waves, Higgs boson, or the graviton.
No need? What does this even mean?
Whenever a person uses the word “need” there is always an “in order to” clause, often implied.
1. We NEED to consider gravity waves IN ORDER TO be in line with the predictions General Relativity.
2. We NEED the Higgs or similar mechanism IN ORDER TO generate masses for the W and Z bosons.
3. We NEED a spin-2 particle we call the graviton IN ORDER TO form a gauge theory which includes gravity.
I think you mean to predict that a better theory will eventually replace General Relativity and the Standard Model.
DUHHHH!! These two are in contradiction at the Big Bang and near Black Holes!
Now, we know that the graviton and Higgs are LIKELY to be present in this hypothetical theory.
Sure, you can easily bad-mouth their presence in this hypothetical theory with words like “emergent” and “approximation”.
But to vilify these ideas (graviton, Higgs) when they are so USEFUL to ongoing research is idiotic!
Then again, if mean to say these concepts are USELESS and a waste of time, you’d be mistaken.
Worse, you’d be INSULTING the research of hundreds of theoretical and experimental physicists!
We could have a more interesting discussion if you would avoid ambiguous and insulting language.