Flat background general relativity


Flat background general relativity (FBGR) is my personal attempt to "dent" Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR).  It is driven by my dislike for the black hole prediction of GR.  The black hole has always impressed me as being a self-contradiction within GR.  This is because entry into a black hole is analogous to breaking the lightspeed barrier of special relativity (SR).  For that reason, I feel that GR cannot be completely correct.  Yet at the same time, GR has been well confirmed by observation to the point that it is an obvious improvement over its predecessor (namely Newton's theory of gravity).  These concerns demand a theory whose predictions are very close to those of GR in what are called the "weak field" cases (such as within the solar system), while being different enough in the strong field cases to remove the black hole from theory.  FBGR is a theory that I have devised which meets those requirements.

FBGR is built on GR itself, and so incorporates many of its central tenets.  Like GR (and also SR), FBGR assumes that space and time are two aspects of a four-dimensional entity called spacetime.  Like GR, FBGR assumes that spacetime is locally described by SR.  Like GR, FBGR assumes that the phenomenon of gravitation (which is the tendency of massive object to be accelerated towards each other) is due to the curvature of the shape of the spacetime instead of being due to the force of gravity.  Like GR, FBGR assumes that the contents of a spacetime and their movements determines the shape of the spacetime. Where FBGR diverges from GR is in the assumption that spacetime as an observer views it acts as a flat background spacetime.  FBGR also assumes that the phenomena of gravitational time dilation and the gravitational length contraction of parallactically measured distances dictates the relationship between the local (or foreground) intervals of spacetime and those same intervals as they appear to an observer.   The reason that FBGR must be different than GR is that when the shape of a background spacetime is derived from the foreground shapes of spacetime predicted by GR, that shape usually is not flat.

In FBGR, the shapes of spacetime are obtained from the shapes predicted by GR by "stretching" (or in the FBGR terminology distorting) them to have a flat background.  For the black hole cases studied so far, the boundary of a black hole (which is called at the event horizon) goes from being a set of positions that you cannot rise above from below in GR to being a set of positions that you cannot fall below from above in FBGR.  If this falling below is not permitted, then a black hole cannot form.  In that case, the objects which are currently considered to be black holes must be something else, such as the hypothesized quark stars.  Note that these are still gravitationally collapsed objects with intense gravitational fields that can easily support the accretion disk that is the most easily observed part of a "black hole" system.  However, unlike black holes the objects themselves are not hidden behind an event horizon and so can be observed directly.

The current status of this theory is that of being somewhat on the ropes.  Last year, I had a physics professor show me that my theory as then formulated (and still presented in the scholarly article on this web site) did not obey the conservation of energy and momentum for the case of an electromagnetic field surrounding a rotating massive object.  On one level, that is a mess, but on the other hand knowing what is wrong with one's ideas is an important part in finding out what is right.  I am current xploring other options for dealing with this case in the hopes of finding an arrangement that works.  I am confident that I can eventually find such an arrangement, but it then will need to be tested in yet more cases to be sure that it does not break yet again.

As for getting this theory published:  That is proving to be a difficult thing, but I have also come to realize that publishing this kind of thing in a respect physics journal should not be easy.  Creating a alternative to GR is easy.  Creating one that is a potential competitor is something else again.  Furthermore, trying to put forward an alternate theory as an outsider makes things yet more difficult.  However, much of the trouble lies in the lack of relevant training an outsider like myself has.  There is some natural resistance within the field to having someone like myself come along a top Einstein, but as an obstacle that pales in comparison to .the training issue.  Perhaps the biggest impediment to getting published as an outsider in emotional:  It is very easy to fall into the trap of blaming the scientists for the rejections that you get instead of yourself (and it is the job of the outsider not only to create a good theory but also to communicate it properly).  The trouble is that once the recriminations start, the science stops, and once the science stops the theory is dead whether its creator continues to push it or not.  Suffice it to say that I refuse to let this project die like that.   Overall, my attitude is that my work will be published when it is right, and that my job is to make it right.  In the meantime, as much as rejections hurt, they none the less helps to point me towards the way to make my work right and therefore publishable.

FBGR is a project which makes use of the skills that I have acquired as a software engineer.  Fundamentally, what I am trying to do is to debug GR.  However, this project also borrows from my analysis skills including my ability to handle complexity.  Just as in software, you cannot give up on a problem.  Breaking off and giving yourself a chance to come at it from a different angle is one thing, but this is not a project that I will toss until and unless I have actual proof that it cannot ever be made right  Such proof almost certainly would be observational.  Mathematical disproof by contradiction of this whole effort (instead of just the current approach) is something that I really do not expect.

For those who want to know more, please see the technical presentation of FBGR.  Just do note that this page is meant for the physics community instead of for the general audience that this page is aimed at.