Acceleration due to gravitons

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kingdavid</i>
<br />the reason for Jupiter's greater acceleration than Earth's, is nothing to do with my erroneus thinking about gravitons travelling faster there but, simply that Jupiter attracts many more gravitons, hence more will hit from above and the falling object will accelerate quicker than on Earth.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Well, yes, sort of. Mass does not "attract gravitons" because mass does not attract anything. (Gravitons do not act on one another except at scales larger than a kiloparsec -- the size of a galaxy core.) But Jupiter has more mass than Earth, so Jupiter <i>blocks</i> more gravitons trying to hit the falling object from below than Earth can. Most gravitons get through in both cases, Jupiter and Earth. But Jupiter is more effective than Earth in blocking some gravitons because it has more "matter ingredients" to do the blocking.

Your last phrase ("hence more will hit from above and the falling object will accelerate quicker than on Earth") is correct. The reason is better blocking, not some form of attraction. -|Tom|-

Okay thanks for that Tom - I am trying to understand how the MM works. After being away from gravity research for some time now, I have lost the grasp of MM and am having to re-educate myself again.

cheers[]

I always thought two objects(eg a pea and large ball bearing) dropped from a height would fall at the exact same rate.

However if the greater mass blocks more gravitons from the bottom than does the pea, then the BB will fall slightly faster- is this true?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kingdavid</i>
<br />I always thought two objects(eg a pea and large ball bearing) dropped from a height would fall at the exact same rate.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">True.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">However if the greater mass blocks more gravitons from the bottom than does the pea, then the BB will fall slightly faster- is this true?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No. The "blocking from below" is done by the Earth, and is the same for any falling body. The falling body (BB or pea) can be thought as made up of N matter ingredients. Gravitons make each and every matter ingredient fall at the same rate. So it does not matter how big or small N is.

Remember the basic mantra for Le Sage gravity as implemented in MM: The apple falls from the tree because more gravitons strike it from above than from below because the Earth blocks some gravitons coming from below.

Another way to visualize Le Sage gravity is Maxwell's "swarm of bees" analogy. Think of the whole sky as a source of light (analogous to gravitons), and think of physical bodies as swarms of bees (analogous to matter ingredients). Then in any direction where we see a swarm of bees (mass), we see some of the light (gravitons) blocked, which results in some darkness (absence of graviton pushes) from that direction. -|Tom|-