Expanding Matter. And Space, to a lesser degree?

Was watching an interesting show on gravity over the last few days, actually rewatched it a few times. Some points they made:

1. A stationary accelerometer will register 9.8 meters per second vertical acceleration (or 1 g).

2. Drop the accelerometer, say off the edge of a tall building or cliff, and it will register zero acceleration, for the duration of the fall.

3. Throw a ball out horizontally, and it will gradually curve down, return to earth.

A decade or two back I toyed with an idea: what if everything is expanding, at a steadily accelerating rate, 9.8 meters per second. The earth is expanding, you're expanding, all the yardsticks. Guess it's a done deal?



The above link kind of nags you to "log in", I was ok with my Google ID. A quote from the article:

So, understanding relativity and gravity is mainly a matter of overcoming our resistance to a peculiar, embarrassingly implausible idea: that while you read this, the space that contains our planet — including every molecule in our bodies, everything we can see out to the horizon, and every ruler on its surface — will double in size.

Link to the Gravity show, watchable 2 parter:

The Amazing World of Gravity | TVrg

 

Yeah. Maybe title should be "Expanding Matter", more succinct. Done.

 

This page kinda pours cold water on the above:

Gravity as Expansion and Many Worlds

Mentions exceptions, super-dense dwarf stars for example.

Still, it's interesting. If something has all the earmarks of being something, ie gravity being due to an accelerating expansion, even if it's ultimately not the case, maybe it's still worthwhile to consider it, as a model.

 

Porridge for breakfast day, and I like to chop a little apple into it. This time of year I can get them from our weed apple tree.

So I was out there, giving it a shake, and they're thudding down, one even bopped me on the head lol.

And it occurred to me, kind of topical?

 

One interesting analogy:

In my engineering drafting career, sometime we needed to calculate ball bin volume. The balls being steel balls of uniform diameter (for ball mill). Funny thing: no matter what the ball diameter, the volume of any given weight was the same. There was always the same ratio of steel to void.

I looked up the moon's gravity: almost exactly 1/6 of earth's. But: the moon's radius is no where near 1/6 of earth's. More coffin nails I guess.

 

Yes and yes.

Maybe it's just an imperfect model, but everything on earth behaves as if there is a universal, accelerating expansion: the steady-Eddy one G vertical, how a thrown ball curves into a downward trajectory. Or how an accelerometer tossed into the air, or dropped from a height, registers zero G forces, as long as it's airborne.

So maybe there's something comparable going on?

 

That's quite right, but oddly contradictory: when the acclerometer is "stationary", say sitting on a table top, it registers 1G vertical acceleration. And when you drop it down an elevator shaft, all the way down it registers no acceleration, as it accelerates.

I linked one article, in post #4, which I readily concede shuts down the premise in the thread title. That article is just the tip-of-iceberg, links back to this tome, Reflections On Relativity, by Kevin Brown:

Reflections on Relativity

I managed a few paragraphs of the preface.

 

Yes. Still, if the accelerometer were in a spaceship, which commenced accelerating at 1G, it would behave exactly as it does on earth, sitting on that table. Puzzling as heck.

 

Last year's crop was better, btw. Maybe not enough rain this year. One day's pickings, last year:

 

Yeah I was doing my morning push-ups a few minutes ago, that 1G never lets up, whatever it is.

I tried valiantly to read a bit of that Reflections on Relativity. Very commendable that it's freely available online btw. Anyway: I don't have enough brain cells. Very bright guy, and perhaps that what it takes to understand these big-picture things?

And what to make then of David Levitt, with his expansion explanation? It's seductively convincing, at least "locally", for how gravity manifests, here. But a few dwarf stars, black holes: now what??

Still, I have a hunch there IS a simple explanation, that can do an end-run around all the complex math and language.