Wienberg and other physicists who tend to believe in quantum mechanics as fundamental rather than General Relativity, seem to believe that space is not really curved- that the geometrical aspects of GR are just math representations and not reality. Their belief seems to come from formulations of gravity as a field in flat 3-d space that are fully equivalent to GR (from what I read) except that the math infinities, such as the ones that arise in QED, cannot be renormalized as the graviton has spin 2. So it may not be reliable to think in terms of GR geometry any more.

It does seem strange that when you do think in terms of GR and use that math plus astronomy observations to measure the curvature of space-time, it always comes out exactly flat, within the error of the measurements. One explanation is that space is exactly flat but contains fields like gravity.

• I hope they are. - pmartin - November 27, 2001 - 17:49 UTC
  • So, how to explain inverse square law then? - alexander - November 28, 2001 - 00:19 UTC
    • Two answers - yanniru - November 28, 2001 - 15:12 UTC
      • Richard, I peronally contributed in dismissal of - alexander - November 28, 2001 - 20:42 UTC
        • Reference please to your publication - yanniru - November 29, 2001 - 15:20 UTC
          • For Richard (about gravity on mm scale). - alexander - December 1, 2001 - 02:27 UTC
            • Casmuir effect - yanniru - December 1, 2001 - 19:10 UTC
              • Way far. Casimir is 10^-6 or so. nt - alexander - December 3, 2001 - 22:39 UTC
    • Alex = Priest! - luis_hamburgh - November 30, 2001 - 01:00 UTC
      • Luis, stupidity continues? - alexander - November 30, 2001 - 18:47 UTC
        • Alex = 1st non-religious person on my ignore list. :( - luis_hamburgh - December 2, 2001 - 21:15 UTC
          • - luis_hamburgh - December 3, 2001 - 18:26 UTC
          • Luis, if we have inverse square, space is 3-D (for gravity). - alexander - December 3, 2001 - 22:42 UTC
    • The explanation of Inverse Square Law - pmartin - November 30, 2001 - 18:43 UTC
      • Paul, don't you see the obvious? - alexander - November 30, 2001 - 19:01 UTC
        • No. At least it is not obvious to me. - pmartin - December 1, 2001 - 01:28 UTC
          • If our space were "imbedded" inverse square would fail. - alexander - December 1, 2001 - 02:07 UTC
            • Not necessarily - pmartin - December 1, 2001 - 05:01 UTC
              • I think, mathematicians did that 100 years ago or so. - alexander - December 3, 2001 - 22:48 UTC