Origin of Inertia: Extended Mach's Principle and Cosmological Consequences

by Amitabha Ghosh

The primary theme of this monograph is a theory in which Newton's static gravitational interaction has been replaced by a new dynamic model.

162 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

Reviews

[Nidish · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book offers an interesting alternative to newton's law of gravitation, introducing a velocity dependent term (in addition to Mach's principle that included an acceleration dependent term). Although the terms themselves seem insignificant additions at first sight, the book goes on to demonstrate that such a formalism can be used to explain away buzz-word concepts like dark energy and expanding universe using just a slightly modified version of the newtonian formalism.

It offers several interesting philosophical and historical perspectives on aspects like newtonian absolutism, etc. As the author himself proclaims in the epilogue, the math in the book is definitely not cloaked in modern physical notations, but as a student of engineering dynamics I found the book very accessible while at the same time stimulating.

The book really made me reflect on how most of the mathematical theories we have are still just theories that happen to explain observations. And a sufficiently smart person could theoretically come up with several theoretical frameworks for the same set of observations. These are some aspects of the scientific method I often tend to lose sight of as a practicing engineer and the book definitely made me reflect on them deeply.

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another good physics book which stays on topic attempting to argue an off beat topic with the reader through obscure mathematical derivations of effects which are currently too small to calculate even within our solar system. Why oh why do books intended to inform the reader spew a ton of math intended to obscure their meaning. What's needed for new ideas to propagate is for lucid analogy which convey the mechanism to be offered/explained. Mach/Newton had the bucket of water and talked about where the local observed effect originated. If we want to explain inertia we'll need a similar analog. Casimir for example used boats crashing together due to wave crests in a harbor. Once people imagined the effect of waves on particles at a significantly reduced size they could measure effects created with thought experiments. There are some suggestions (like measuring red-shift past Jupiter at some point in our technology) But what we truly need is LIGO type signal to noise to make measurement of gravity in earth bound experiment.