On the origin of gravity and the laws of Newton

By Erik P. Verlinde. 2010

1,710 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Starting from first principles and general assumptions we present a heuristic argument that shows that Newton’s law of gravitation naturally arises in a theory in which space emerges through a holographic scenario. Gravity is identified with an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even Newton’s law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle auggests that it is actually the law of inertia whose origin is entropic.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb63ec641603616369e3080f78cda7ed836b227b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Yi Wang
2. Shuang Wang
3. Pavel Kroupa
4. R. Cai
5. Miao Li
6. B. Famaey
7. S. McGaugh
8. N. Ohta

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Yi Wang
2. Shuang Wang
3. R. Cai
4. Pavel Kroupa
5. Miao Li
6. Andrew Strominger
7. S. Raju
8. N. Ohta

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. R. Cai
2. Andrew Strominger
3. Miao Li
4. Shuang Wang
5. Yi Wang
6. B. Famaey
7. N. Ohta
8. V. Lysov

Citations in the corpus

• Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND): Observational Phenomenology and Relativistic Extensions (2011, background): “Interestingly, arguments very similar to this whole vacuum radiation approach have also recently been made in the context of entropic gravity [191, 192, 224, 476].”
• The Dark Matter Crisis: Falsification of the Current Standard Model of Cosmology (2012, background): “Furthermore, Modesto & Randono (2010) have studied the approach of Verlinde (2011) and suggest that Milgromian-like dynamics ensue once well-motivated corrections are applied.”
• Holographic dark energy (2016, background): “Dark Energy from Entropic Force Verlinde conjectured that gravity may be an entropic force, instead of a fundamental force of nature [215].”
• Hořava gravity at a Lifshitz point: A progress report (2017, background): “This might shed light on the nature of the gravitational forces [85].”
• Wilsonian approach to fluid/gravity duality (2010, background): “In this regard, there may be interesting connections with previous work in this direction including in particular [43,44,45].”
• Computational complexity and black hole horizons (2014, background): “Entropic theories of gravity [29, 30] build in various ways on the parallels between general relativity and thermodynamics, and on entropic forces in statistical mechanics.”
• Generalized Uncertainty Principle: Approaches and Applications (2014, methodology): “The basic assumption is that the entropy offer a description for the gravity in the underlying microstructure of a quantum spacetime [240, 264],”
• QBism, the Perimeter of Quantum Bayesianism (2010, background): “It says that there is probably something right about the holographic principles arising from other reaches of physics [95].”
• Friedmann Equations from Entropic Force (2010, methodology): “Among various interesting observations made by Verlinde, here we mention two of them.”
• Galaxies as simple dynamical systems: observational data disfavor dark matter and stochastic star formation (2014, background): “Some ideas can be found for example in [336, 337] on an approach for understanding exotic dark matter and dark energy in terms of gravitational polarisation leading to SMoCproperties on large scales while recovering the correct SIDbehavior on galactic scales, in [338] on mirror dark matter, in [339]”
• Quantum UV/IR relations and holographic dark energy from entropic force (2010, background): “Recently, Verlinde [4] conjectured that gravity can be explained as an entropic force.”
• Quantum-Spacetime Phenomenology (2008, background): “Further encouragement for the idea of an emerging spacetime (though not necessarily invoking the condensed-matter perspective) comes from the realization [304, 533, 444] that the Einstein equations can be viewed as an equation of state, so in some sense thermodynamics implies GR and the associated m”
• Emergent spacetime and holographic CFTs (2011, background): “The emergence of gravity has also been recently addressed in [14] from another point of view and also in [15], [16].”