By William K. Vogeler
The Apple stopped because it couldn’t get past the Earth.
With inertia from the Big Bang, all matter is traveling the same course in the expanding universe. Everything from galaxies to stars to planets --- it is all moving. Even Newton and his Apple were set in motion by the Big Bang.
It is like a person traveling in a spacecraft. The rocket transfers energy to the spacecraft, the passenger and everything else in the vehicle.
But matter slows or stops when it meets resistance from other matter. In the cosmos, stars strain against space and curve it. On Earth, apples crash into the ground.
The more massive and dense matter becomes, the more resistance it encounters in this expansion. And the resistance to that motion is the apparent weight.
This relationship is like a parachute and its cargo suspended in air. The parachute apparently carries the weight, but actually air molecules moving against the fabric hold it aloft.
In a similar way, the Big Bang is pushing matter against the fabric of space and giving matter the apparent effect of gravity. That force is really matter moving against other matter.
This idea is consistent with aspects of Newtonian gravitation and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Newton perceived that bodies of matter attract each other, and Einstein concluded that matter does so because it curves space. The Big Bang further explains these phenomena.
As seen at the edges of the universe, for example, the Big Bang launched galaxies that are accelerating away. These galaxies are stretching the fabric of space so thin it provides less resistance. Applying Einstein’s theory, this means that the curvature of space --- or gravity --- is diminishing there.
In the realm of atoms, the Big Bang ejected matter that evolved into elements with variable resistances --- or weight. Lead, for example, has more electons and protons than helium and so it meets more resistance interacting with other matter. In Newton’s terms, the Earth is heavier still because of its massive combination of elements.
So if the Earth were not in the way, apples would keep falling away from the Big Bang like everything else. In that sense, the Apple stopped here.
Copyright 2007 © William K. Vogeler