Quotes from book
Reinventing Gravity

John Moffat

Reinventing Gravity: A Scientist Goes Beyond Einstein is a science text by John W. Moffat, which explains his controversial theory of gravity.

“Could it be, nevertheless, that Einstein's theory is wrong? Might it be necessary to modify it—to find a new theory of gravity that can explain both the stronger gravity and the apparent antigravity being observed today—rather than simply throwing in invisible things to make the standard model work?”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Introduction, A New Gravity Theory, p. xi
Reinventing Gravity (2008)

“Hunting for elusive dark matter is now a multibillion dollar international scientific industry.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 4, Dark Matter, p. 75

“A much faster speed of light in the infant universe solved the horizon problem and therefore explained the overall smoothness of the temperatures of the CMB radiation, because light now traveled extremely quickly between all parts of the expanding but not inflating universe.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 6, Inflation And Variable Speed Of Light (VSL), p. 100

“The eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant had conjectured that Messier's nebulae were distant "island universes" outside our Milky Way galaxy, but many scientists in the early twentieth century disagreed.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 3, The Beginning Of Modern Cosmology, p. 54

“One truth we have been able to count on concerning scientific persuit over the centuries has been that only testable theories survive the intense scrutiny of experimental science.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 8, Strings And Quantum Gravity, p. 136

“This is the only sure way I know to counter the anti-Copernican idea that the universe is accelerating in our epoch - to get rid of the problem entirely!”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 15, Dark Energy And The Accelerating Universe, p. 207

“When I was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1950s, Sir Isaac Newton's presence was still almost palpable.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 1, The Greeks To Newton, p. 24

“It is hard to understand how this infinitely dense singularity can evaporate into nothing. For matter inside the black hole leak out into the universe requires that it travel faster than the speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 85

“Almost 30 percent of the total matter-energy budget is said to be composed of so-called cold dark matter and almost 70 percent of "dark energy," leaving only about 4 percent as visible matter in the form of the atoms that make up the stars, planets, interstellar dust, and ourselves. Such is the degree of discrepancy between theory and observations today.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Prologue, The Elusive Planet Vulcan, A Parable, p. 5
Reinventing Gravity (2008)

“It may be that ultimately the search for dark matter will turn out to be the most expensive and largest null result experiment since the Michelson-Morely experiment, which failed to detect the ether.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 4, Dark Matter, p. 77

“Today, like the elusive planet Vulcan in the nineteenth century, dark matter is accepted by the majority of astronomers and physicists as actually existing. Dark matter, although it has never been seen, is part of the generally accepted standard model of physics and cosmology, which also includes the big bang beginning of the universe.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 4, Dark Matter, p. 69

“To physicists such as myself, the huge amount of invisible dark matter needed to make Einstein's theory fit the astrophysical data is reason enough for exploring modified gravity theories.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 9, Other Alternative Gravity Theories, p. 143

“It is difficult to falsify the hypothesis of dark matter, because, as with Ptolemy's epicycles, true believers can always add additional arbitrary features and free parameters to overcome any conceivable difficulties that occur with the dark matter models.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 10, Modified Gravity (MOG), p. 163-164

“Is the reader feeling confused about the status of the black hole information paradox and black holes in general? So am I!”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 87

“Einstein entertained counterintuitive notions that allowed him to pull physics from the mechanistic, clockwork universe of the eighteenth century up into the twentieth century.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 2, Einstein, p. 25

“Experimentalists dream of some spectacular discovery such as the proof of the existence of black holes to justify the more than eight billion dollars it has cost to build the LHC.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 88

“Indeed, there is a now a minority of cosmologists who question a beginning of the universe at all; instead they favor a cyclic model with a series of expansions and contractions.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 16, The Eternal Universe, p. 213 (See also: Fred Hoyle)

“Inflation itself proceeds at a speed faster than the measured speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 6, Inflation And Variable Speed Of Light (VSL), p. 102

“This is an extraordinary time in the history of science, in that we cannot only theorize about the beginning of the universe, but actually study the celestial fossils of how it happened.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 16, The Eternal Universe, p. 220

“Giving up Einstein's theory of gravity is simply unacceptable to many in the community. It may take a new generation of physicists to view the evidence with unclouded eyes.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Epilogue, p. 221
Reinventing Gravity (2008)

Similar authors

John Moffat photo

John Moffat 22

British-Canadian physicist 1932

Max Planck photo

Max Planck 30

German theoretical physicist

Peter Higgs photo

Peter Higgs 8

British physicist

J. J. Thomson photo

J. J. Thomson 8

British physicist

Niels Bohr photo

Niels Bohr 37

Danish physicist

Clinton Davisson photo

Clinton Davisson 1

physicist

Samuel C. C. Ting photo

Samuel C. C. Ting 1

physicist

Frits Zernike photo

Frits Zernike 1

Dutch physicist

Richard Feynman photo

Richard Feynman 181

American theoretical physicist

Ernst Ruska photo

Ernst Ruska 2

German physicist

Similar authors

John Moffat photo

John Moffat 22

British-Canadian physicist 1932

Max Planck photo

Max Planck 30

German theoretical physicist

Peter Higgs photo

Peter Higgs 8

British physicist

J. J. Thomson photo

J. J. Thomson 8

British physicist

Niels Bohr photo

Niels Bohr 37

Danish physicist