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From: Anthony Potts <potts@cern.ch>
Subject: Re: Stapp, PK & Physics Today 
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Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 10:34:31 GMT
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On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, Richard Caldwell wrote:

> 
> What a joke!  The inverse square law has nothing to do with gravity in 
> particular.  It is a result of the geometry of anything that radiates 
> spherically from a point source.  The surface area of a sphere increases with 
> the square of the radius, so the flux density of anything radiating uniformly 
> from a point source must decrease with the square of the distance from the 
> source.
> 
> The only way this could not be true is if something (like gravity) doesn't 
> radiate uniformly in all directions.  This is true when you're very close to a 
> large body of irregular shape and irregular density.  That's why they can use 
> variations in gravimetric readings to predict vocanic eruptions.
> 
> Richard
> 
Richard, I am sorry to disillusion you here, but your arguments are 
wrong. Forces only drop off as inverse square if they are mediated by 
massless bosons, giving them a potential which is like

	1/r

If you have massive vector bosons (as in the weak force), then you get a 
Yukowa potential, which is like

	e^(k.r)
	-------
	   r

Which gives you the propagator in the feynman diagrams of

	F(q) =    1
	       -------
	       q^2+m^2

And most definitely NOT 1/r^2.

I understand that this is pretty specific stuff, but it is well within 
undergraduate level, and you do yourself no favours by starting off your 
statement with "What a joke!", perhaps you could be a little less 
insulting in future when you want to educate someone. It is perfectly 
valid to probe the inverse square law for gravity. It is the same as 
trying to measure the mass of the graviton.

Anthony Potts.
