Scientists are starting to prove a new theory of gravity that can have unprecedented impact on the way the universe is viewed. If proven, this new theory can shed new light to dark matter, dark energy, and even the way the universe functions.
Emergent gravity has been found to predict the exact same "deviation" of movement that is usually explained by the "presence" of the yet-to-be-discovered dark matter. Proponent Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute of Theoretical Physics said in his paper that we may be looking at gravity all wrong.
Erik Verlinde is known to have surprised the world way back in 2010 with hints on his new gravitational theory. He said gravity is not a fundamental force of nature, but instead an emergent one. This makes gravity similar to temperature, where the movement of particles transforms energy into heat. In the same respect, gravity emerges from the changes in the bits of particles in space-time.
According to Physics.org, Verlinde explains that Newton's second law can be explained the same way the building blocks work on gravity. This offers a new explanation on falling apples and satellites in orbit. Verlinde's latest findings now show how to understand the behavior of stars without dark matter.
It can be remembered that the outer regions of galaxies like the Milky Way rotate much faster around the center. This is odd because the amount of ordinary matter like stars and planets are very few in the center, which means something else had to account for the gravitational force needed to make the Milky Way move.
Physicists proposed a yet-to-be-seen kind of particle known as dark matter to be responsible for such movement. When observed, it appears dark matter comprise about 80-percent of the universe, which may not simply make sense.
Verlinde said that there's no need to use dark matter when trying to interpret the movement of galaxies -- or other stellar bodies -- this way. He said one way to look at it is through using his version of the holographic principle.
Scientists Gerard 't Hooft and Leonard Susskind affirmed that all information in the entire universe can be "found" on an imaginary sphere around this. This is like a stenogram that, while it seems confusing at first, starts to form a picture because of the union of the pieces under a "sheet." This is in no way saying the world is an illusion, but rather the world around us is simply perceived from a "different" perspective.
This is why the mass of the black hole is not equal to its volume or the amount of particles in it, but rather its surface area. It's as if all the information contained in the black hole - and the universe - is plastered on a "sheet" just outside of it.
This means instead of using dark matter and dark energy, we can simply attribute the "missing" matter in the universe to bits of "extra" information in space. Gravity, in this respect, can be encoded in Verlinde's new equation.
This can have tremendous effects on the way gravity -- and therefore, simple to more complicated matters such as black holes -- can be studied. When proven, Verlinde's new theory can shatter the current world-view on the Standard Model and even provide insights on various "paradoxes" such as a black hole's event horizon or even the Big Bang.