A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  Peter said, “After being convinced by the Michelson-Morley experiments that an ether made of a material capable of slowing down the speed of light could not exist, Einstein seems to have gone on to postulate the existence of another kind of ether, this time filled with lines of force and, thus, he explains gravity. It seems to me that he solves some problems only to create others. Like you, I wanted to find in Einstein an explanation of where these lines of force came and how they came to be arranged as they were but I never found in Einstein any such explanation.”

  Peter also said, “And if you are right about Einstein’s believing that gravity was a property of matter, I would want to know what he said about where it lies and what explains it and how it works.”

  Sylvia said, “I don’t remember reading anything by him or about his ideas that got into any of that.”

  Peter said, “And I have to admit I am a little bothered by some the ideas of the author of the essay we found here.”

  “What bothers you about our author’s ideas, Peter?” Sylvia asked.

  “Oh,” Peter said. What bothers me are all the particles and sub-particles and sub-sub particles and sub-sub-sub particles and their various properties—all invisible and undetectable—that the author conjures up out of thin air and out of the richness of his, her, or its imagination. Also the way the forces of these various particles operate is not adequately explained as far as I am concerned. It all bothers me.”

  “Well,” Sylvia said, “Despite its inadequacies, I still think I prefer our author’s ideas to either of our interpretations of Einstein’s ideas. I like the idea of objects being concentric sphere, of their being like flowers, of their being like spiders, and of their being like fishermen. It is all so pretty and dramatic. I like it.”

  “I suppose I do too,” Peter said. Then, an hour later, he’d chance his mind and decide that maybe his interpretation of Einstein’s theory was the superior one. After another hour passed, he’d decide he didn’t like any of the theories, that Newton was right to think that gravity just could not be explained. The next day, Peter might wake up thinking that Sylvia’s interpretation of Einstein’s theory of gravity was best. He’d go back and forth, sometimes trying even to come up with a theory of his own and sometimes feeling that an idea was there, in his mind, behind some horizon that existed there, but never quite rose up above the horizon.

  Sylvia too never could quite made up her mind about which theory, if any, was best. She too tried but never succeeded in coming up with an idea of her own.

  They knew that wondering about a subject such as gravity could last a lifetime without ever being resolved. Still, they wondered.

  They thought they might better be able to evaluate the various theories (and incidentally discover which, of their two interpretations of Einstein’s theory, was the correct one) once they got back to Earth and talked to a few physicists. Thinking that the physicists and libraries back on Earth would help them reach conclusions about the nature of gravity helped to free their minds.

  They would just put the problem on some back burner in their minds and therefore be free to think about other things, especially the baby and the logistics surrounding their forthcoming trip back to Earth.

  “Let’s see what the physicists back on Earth say about this and reserve our judgment until then,” Sylvia said by way of summing up what she felt.

  And, hearing her say that, Peter sighed with relief. “Thanks for saying that, Sylvia. Just hearing the words takes a big load off my mind. We need to think about other things besides gravity right now.” He reached out and touched the tips of the fingers of her right hand with the tips of the fingers of his left hand.

  “We are just not well enough trained in this to be able to resolve the dispute,” he said.

  After some time doing additional thinking, Sylvia said, “Of course, it is also possible that the physicists back home have been so bound up in the assumptions underlying Einstein’s theory that they might not be capable of objectively evaluating any new idea.”

  Peter further mused, “You might have a good point there. We might be unable to reach conclusions that satisfy us, regardless of what those physicists say.” “Sylvia said, “The only satisfaction we’ll get will be the satisfaction we give each other.” “Here. Here,” Peter said.

  Later that night, Peter had another thought that he promptly shared with Sylvia, “Einstein’s theory might have achieved the status it’s achieved in our culture simply because no other theories about gravity existed aside from it in which case you would have just one more example of people, physicists included, preferring something—anything as long as the idea is dressed up right—because it is better than nothing.”

  “And, having once accepted such an idea, they become blind to any others,” Sylvia said.

  “When the blind lead the blind, all risk falling into a ditch,” Peter said, paraphrasing an aphorism he vaguely remembering once reading or hearing. Sylvia, in a wickedly funny mood said, “Yet ironically the ditch may be the best place to be after all.” Peter said, “What does all of this have to do with gravity?”

  Then he had and shared with Sylvia one final idea about a theory that covered gravity that a theorist living on Earth hundreds of years before once had. The reference just crossed Peter’s mind suddenly and unexpectedly. He thought of it as a lone sailboat drifting across a placid sea.

  He asked Sylvia, “Do you know anything about Renee Descartes? Surely, you must have read something about him in the course of your studies.”

  She said, “I know the name of course. And I’m sure he was mentioned in textbooks assigned to me in college, but, though I’m ashamed to say it, I don’t remember anything about his ideas or why he earned a place in the history of science or philosophy. Wait. Isn’t he the one who came up with the saying ‘I think therefore I am?’” Peter nodded and said, “Yes, he’s the one who came up with that.”

  Sylvia shook her head and said, “I can’t even recall where and why he came up with that or how it fit into any larger schema or why he got so famous for saying it.”

  Peter said, “It just so happens that there was a time in my life (years before I got picked to train to be an asteroid) that I made the study of the history of science and philosophy a hobby of mine. Whenever I visited a library or bookstore, I’d wander over to sections where such books were filed. Then I’d buy or check out the book or find a seat and read it while in the library or bookstore. As was the case with a lot of what I read then, a lot of what Descartes said did not resonate with me. More than just not resonating, a lot of what he wrote or was characterized as having written seemed utterly illogical and preposterous to me. Even the famous phrase seemed to me to be illogical and would have made more sense if rephrased as ‘I think I think; therefore, I think I am.’

  But, though I disregarded a lot of what Descartes wrote, a little bit of what he wrote appealed to me. I filed it away in my mind and pulled it out once in a while for reconsideration. That happened again just now when suddenly the relevance of the little bit of interesting Descartes to our essay and thoughts on gravity came to my mind.

  “That little bit had to do with the nature of space and matter. Unlike the atomists of ancient Greek philosophy, Descartes believed that particles even smaller than atoms existed and that the spectrum of the small was virtually infinite and that these particles smaller than atoms were so numerous that they filled all of space and moved around according to their various properties. He called the moving around of clusters of particles vortices and said that space was filled with vortices. He did not get very specific about this. He did not provide a mathematical summary of it. But he did say that gravity and magnetism could be explained by the existence of these as-yet unknown particles that rotated and spiraled through space.

  “Now, think about it. Didn’t Descartes anticipate a lot of what was contained in that essay we read? Might it not be fair to say that the essay more Cartesian than either Newtonian or Einsteinian?�
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  Sylvia said, “I suppose it’s possible. I wish there was a library here full of books about the history of science and philosophy on Earth and elsewhere. If there was, I’d go there right now and look for a book on Descartes and study it. But we don’t have such a library.”

  “All we can do, I suppose, is trust that I am remembering correctly what I once read,” Peter said. “That’s all we can do for now,” Sylvia said, echoing Peter. And he echoed her, “That’s all we can do.” “But it’s an interesting thought,” Sylvia said.

  Chapter 56: A Cry in the Dawn

  About dawn of the day after the discussion of the nature of gravity seemed to have exhausted itself, Sylvia let out a sharp cry. She tried lifting herself up off the bed by sliding her arms backwards and folding them so that she would be supported on her elbows. But the effort was too great for her. She lay back in bed. She was deathly pale. Sweat beaded on her forehead. “Peter,” she called. “Peter help me.”

  Peter had slept through her cry. He slept also through her calling twice to him. She had to shake him to get him to wake up. He had been deep in sleep, dreaming perhaps about gravity when Sylvia poked him in the shoulder and called again, maybe a little louder than before, “Peter help me.

  Peter asked, “What is wrong? Did you just have a nightmare?” “No, it wasn’t that,” Sylvia said. “I think my water is breaking. I am going to press the alarm button. I think the time has come to press that button.”

  Sylvia was referring to a device the teacher had given her after class one day. It was a round yellow medallion with a red circle at its center and it hung from a chain. The teacher told her to put the chain with the medallion attached around her neck. That afternoon she did so and found that the chain was so long that the attached medallion fell between her breasts. She had to pull her blouse away from her chest to place the medallion where it would not be noticeable.

  She called Peter over to her and said “Look at how long the chain is” while pulling her shirt away from her chest and bending over slightly so that he could get the thrill (which she knew he would get) of looking down her shirt and seeing her breasts from an angle different from the angle he usually got. “Very nice,” Peter said while smiling in a way she knew he would. He was so thrilled by this new way of catching a glimpse of her breasts that he put his arms around her and rested his head over her blouse at the spot where the medallion was. That happened about a month before the cry in the dawn.

  When the teacher gave Sylvia the chain and medallion, he explained the purpose of the medallion. He told her that, when she felt the first pangs or signs of child birth, all she had to do was press the red circle. And then help would come—she would be taken to a “birthing room.”

  Peter too was given a nearly identical necklace. The only difference between his and her medallion, as far as either of them could tell, was that the circle at the center of his medallion was green, not red, and the chain was made of somewhat larger links. After handing Peter his medallion, the teacher said to him, “If Sylvia becomes incapacitated for any reason, press the green circle at your medallion’s center. Help will then come despite her being incapable of summoning it.

  Sylvia pressed the red circle while Peter sat up beside her and stroked her forehead, her hands, and her hair.

  He noticed suddenly the beads of sweat that lay on her forehead and thought it might be a good idea to put a wash cloth in the sink and run cold water over it and place it on her forehead. “I’ll be right back, “Peter told her and leaned down towards her and kissed her and enjoyed the fact that, though she was worried and in pain, she kissed him back and even made an effort to wrap her arms around him.

  He extricated himself and ran to the sink and turned on the cold water while, at the same time, reaching for a hand towel. While he was in the bathroom wringing out the towel, the door to his room opened. In came, six creatures in revolving carts. Between the third and fourth creature was a bed on wheels.

  Two of the other creatures gathered around Sylvia and carefully moved her from the bed where she was lying to the narrower bed that they had just brought into the room. They moved her by pulling the edges of the sheet on which she was lying, grabbing the edges with three or four limbs each until she lay in mid-air as if on the surface of a trampoline and then carefully carried her suspended on the sheet to the new bed.

  The two creatures who did this set her down gently on the new bed and then lined up behind the creatures responsible for moving the new bed. In the meantime, two of the creatures began busily attaching nozzles to her right arm, forehead, cheeks, and chin.

  Without saying anything to Peter, the creatures began rolling Sylvia out the door. Peter had just enough time to turn the cold water off before rushing to the door and following after Sylvia and the team of creatures assigned to guide her through childbirth.

  Sylvia seemed scared. While being rolled across the floor of the large meeting room and, because she was lying prone on her back, able to see only the ceiling of the room, she called out at one point: “Where is Peter. I want Peter.” When the creatures who escorted her and propelled her across the room said nothing, she called in a voice that sounded to Peter as if it came from somewhere far away, “Peter, are you here?”

  He rushed over to her to reassure her that he was indeed right there beside her; and, as he was doing that, the creature standing at the head of the bed leaned over in Sylvia’s direction and said, “Peter is right here. And we too are here and are dedicated to do everything possible to keep you from feeling pain while this process of giving birth unfolds.”

  Sylvia groaned. Then she said, “Just the same, I want Peter to be here beside me.” “Peter is right here,” the creature said and looked over at Peter as he stepped between two of the creatures walking along the side of the bed. He took Sylvia’s hand and began rubbing it. He leaned over towards Sylvia and said, “Yes, darling, I am here. Don’t be afraid. Everything will be alright.” She said, “My contractions are beginning. I just felt one.” He rubbed her hand.

  They had not known much about childbirth when all of this began; and they did not have access to books on the subject during all the months of the pregnancy. They had to compensate for their ignorance by having long talks in which they shared tidbits of information they recalled hearing, seeing, or reading. One of the subjects they covered was “water breaking;” another was “contractions.”

  But, despite sharing the smattering of information at their disposal (some of which, they knew, might have been wrong), they knew they remained pretty ignorant about the process of childbirth. Also they had no way of knowing how the food the creatures had gone out of the way to offer Sylvia and how the nozzles that they attached to her skin and how the unusual environment and circumstances affected what was about to happen. Childbirth might be made easier as a result. Or, they knew, it might be made harder.

  With Peter struggling to keep pace with the bed that was being rolled with increasing speed across the large room, the creatures got Sylvia over to one of the many doors that were set into the walls of the room which happened to be a door they had never seen open.

  Now, the door opened in front of them. It was just beyond the opening that led to the classroom. The creatures and Sylvia moved into the room on the other side of the doorway. Because the doorway was not very wide, Peter stepped to the side and fell behind the creatures, the bed, and Sylvia. When everything got through except for Peter, he rushed to get through himself before the door closed and managed to get through the doorway just a few seconds after the door began closing. In fact, when he got to the doorway, the door had already closed halfway. He had to turn sideways to slip into the opening left by the closing door.

  Chapter 57: First Stages of Childbirth

  Peter found himself inside of what looked like an operating room. There was a large lighted convex mirror suspended from the ceiling. There was a panel attached to a wall where nozzles like the nozzles Peter knew from the classroom jutted out of
circular openings. Beneath the panel was a table on which shiny instruments were arranged. The table also had a solid front panel full of as many as sixty drawers.

  Peter noticed a second table full of drawers set against the wall to the right of the wall where the panel of nozzles and table full of instruments were. Sitting atop this table was a strange egg-shaped object that seemed to him to be about three feet long and two feet high at the fat end.

  The shiny object seemed to be divided into eight sections with the four at the top half of the object being transparent and the other four having each a different color. One of these sections was blue, another red, a third yellow, and the fourth green.

  The sections were delineated by metallic gray strips about two inches wide that ran horizontally and vertically across the surface of the object.

  He noticed also metallic gray circles on all of the sections including the transparent ones. The object stood on a metallic oval ring about six inches wide that had circular pieces set into it at regular intervals. It sat on top of the table on the side wall. Next to the table were two bronze cylindrical pieces about three inches in diameter and five feet high. The cylinders were connected at the top by a green rod about two feet long and made of three parts, the middle part being larger in diameter than the end parts which connected to the long rods.

  Aside from the furnishings and objects in the room, Peter saw six creatures, all of them propped up on motorized carts and wearing white garments that looked like tee shirts that came midway down their torsos (just long enough to cover all eight of the horizontal slits located on the upper half of their torsos) and with little holes on the sides through which the upper four of their eight limbs projected. Their jutting eyes were focused entirely on Sylvia.