Larry,
We left off with the expanding sphere puzzle. I had the impression that you were offering to explain the accelerometer readings on the tungsten and cobalt spheres and at all points connected to them in terms of expansion of matter in three-dimensional space.
Concerning my three points of criticism, I'll admit that the first one (and the third one) has partly to do with "taste" or "aesthetic sensibility." But not entirely. The idea of a chunk of stuff, an atom, particle, a teeny thing that pushes and resists being pushed, is a most puzzling one. How does it do that? What must it be <i>doing</i> to exhibit these properties? In a certain sense our ideas are inversions of each other. You see a plethora of external things pushing from without; whereas I see a more "nuclear" pushing of each already existing thing from within. Might it be true that less is more?
Although I am critical of much of Einstein's work, sometimes he did or said things that ring true to me. An example is his advice: "Once a theoretical idea has been acquired, one does well to hold fast to it until it leads to an untenable conclusion." Of course, as discussed earlier, the gamut of what counts as "tenable" can be very different to different people.
Concerning my second point, your paraphrasing indicates that you misunderstood it. My intent was not that "Neither lab sized nor astronomical objects behave in ways that favor your theory or mine."
Rather, I would paraphrase what I wrote as: "Neither lab sized nor astronomical objects behave in ways that are conducive to feasible, unequivocal tests so as to decide between the Meta Model and Einstein/Newton."
It's a clear case of "extraordinary claims demanding extraordinary evidence." The Meta Model and my model are both in that "extraordinary" boat. I doubt that the status quo will move until the evidence against it is so "robust" that they would voluntarily, happily surrender. Waiting for technology to advance so as to expose the reality of not only gravitons and elysons, but an infinite hierarchy of additional mediums does not appeal to me at all. My hunch is that lots of unimagined answers are accessible with technology as it is, if only we knew where to look.
On the other hand, my model does not have this particular problem. It's glaringly obvious where to look. In a suitably controlled environment and with suitably engineered components, we could find out fairly quickly whether or not a test object oscillates through a massive sphere. In this case there is no good reason I can think of to leave the question of tenability as a matter of verbal argument. A robust answer is obtainable, so why not seek to obtain it?
Concerning my third point, I will leave it as it stands. Pushing Gravity may offer a unified theory of everything, but until my model is empirically ruled out (if that's what happens) I would prefer a logical basis that is closer to experience, such as a literal interpretation of the readings of accelerometers and clocks.
Concerning the problem of 360 degree orbits, I am aware of the pseudo answers given by other "expanding matter" advocates in response to this question. And I am aware that simple harmonic linear motion is a projection of uniform circular motion. My answer is that I assume that space is not Euclidean; it is curved. I won't go into detail because the idea of space curvature and extra dimensions evidently appeals to you about as much as the idea of hierarchies of ever more things appeals to me. I would simply point out a key difference between the status quo's curvature and mine. GR posits that <i>static</i> curvature somehow produces motion. In my model the generation of space, the outward <i>movement</i> of matter and space is the cause of curvature.
Perhaps to you that is only hand waving. Perhaps we don't share enough common ground to constructively pursue these questions. I am still grateful that you have expressed at least some interest in resolving the tunneled sphere problem. Does the test object oscillate or not? We really ought to let Nature answer this.
RBenish
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