GRAVITY AS AN EMERGENT FORCE PROPORTIONAL TO THE CONSUMPTION OF A QUANTUM FIELD AND TO MASS-ENERGY

This paper proposes a hypothesis according to which gravity is not a fundamental force but emerges from the consumption by particles of a certain substance of the quantum field pervading space. The hypothesis is placed within the established line of emergent gravity (A. Sakharov’s induced gravity, T. Jacobson’s derivation of the Einstein equations from thermodynamics, E. Verlinde’s entropic gravity), from which it is distinguished by a concrete source of emergence — the consumption of a substrate feeding the self-replication of dark particles in the author’s previously proposed cosmological model. Relative to the previous version, the quantity to which consumption is proportional has been corrected. Proportionality to the number of particles was previously asserted; it is shown here that this reading is already excluded by experiment, since it would predict a composition dependence of free-fall acceleration at the level η ≈ 9·10−4, whereas the measured titanium–platinum value is η = (−1.5 ± 2.3 ± 1.5)·10−15. The universality of free fall leaves a single possibility: consumption is proportional to mass-energy, with any admixture of particle-count dependence bounded by α < 6·10−12 at the 2σ level. This turns the equivalence principle from an illustration into a quantitative constraint on the form of the hypothesis. The difference from absorption-type models of gravity in the tradition of Le Sage is treated separately, and the condition under which no screening arises is stated. It is shown how one and the same consumption yields local attraction and cosmological accelerated expansion. The limits of the hypothesis are stated honestly: it derives neither the inverse-square law nor the numerical value of the gravitational constant.