Relativity Without Time Travel SERIES II — GRAVITY & RELATIVITY Stress, Not Curvature Time dilation is one of the most famous—and most misunderstood—predictions of modern physics. Clocks in motion tick more slowly. Clocks in stronger gravitational fields tick more slowly. These effects are measured routinely and agree precisely with theory. What remains unclear is why […]
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The Speed of Light Is the Speed of Sound (Kind of) SERIES II — GRAVITY & RELATIVITY Stress, Not Curvature Few numbers in physics are treated with as much reverence as the speed of light. It appears everywhere—relativity, electromagnetism, causality—and is often presented as a fundamental limit with no deeper explanation. This post makes a
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Why Stiffness Matters More Than Density SERIES II — GRAVITY & RELATIVITY Stress, Not Curvature When gravity is discussed in mechanical terms, a natural instinct is to focus on density. After all, mass density feels like the obvious quantity to change if matter is present. Many alternative gravity models take exactly this approach: more mass,
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Gravity Without Geometry SERIES II — GRAVITY & RELATIVITY Stress, Not Curvature Gravity is one of the most precisely tested phenomena in physics—and one of the least mechanically explained. General Relativity describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime, a geometric prescription introduced by Albert Einstein that has passed every experimental test to date. Yet despite
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Matter as a Defect, Not a Thing SERIES I — FOUNDATIONS The Mechanical Vacuum We are accustomed to thinking of matter as stuff: tiny objects moving through empty space. Electrons, atoms, and particles are treated as fundamental entities—things that exist independently of their surroundings. This post explores a different, mechanically grounded possibility: What if matter
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Light as a Shear Wave SERIES I — FOUNDATIONS The Mechanical Vacuum Light is one of the most familiar phenomena in physics—and one of the most conceptually neglected. We learn early that light is a wave, and later that it is a transverse wave. We calculate its frequency, wavelength, polarization, and speed with extraordinary precision.
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What Does It Mean for the Vacuum to Have Stiffness? SERIES I — FOUNDATIONS The Mechanical Vacuum In everyday language, stiffness sounds like a property of solid objects: steel beams, rubber bands, springs. It feels out of place when applied to empty space. And yet, stiffness is one of the most fundamental quantities in physics—because
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Why Reintroduce a Physical Vacuum? SERIES I — FOUNDATIONS The Mechanical Vacuum Modern physics is extraordinarily successful at predicting what we observe.It is far less clear about what is actually there. We speak of curved spacetime, fluctuating fields, virtual particles, and probability amplitudes—concepts that work mathematically, yet remain physically opaque. The vacuum, in particular, is
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