George Dishman wrote:

No, I think you need to understand that the mass of the
Earth is mainly in the form of protons and neutrons. The
gravity at the surface is nothing more than the sum of
all those myriad tiny contributions.


According to the Discrete Fractal paradigm (
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw ) the world works in a way that is
different from the way you think it does. We would agree on the
strength of the gravitational interaction between the Moon and the
Earth and on how that strength is arrived at. Where we disagree is on
the strength of the gravitational interaction within an atomic scale
system. You would say G still applies, whereas I would say G(n-1)
applies.


Special Relativity taught us that time is not absolute and that space
is not absolute. The laws of physics are equivalent for all inertial
frames.

General Relativity brought in the principle of covariance, which showed
that the laws of physics are equivalent for all frames, inertial or
accelerated.

So space, time, orientation and state of motion are relative. However,
at that point *scale* was still considered absolute. What the Discrete
Fractal paradigm does is to show us how relativity of *scale* is also
one of nature's fundamental symmetries. The subtle thing here, and the
reason that relativity of scale has taken so long to develop, is that
it is not a continuous symmetry, but rather a *discrete* symmetry.
Within a cosmological scale, such as the Stellar Scale or the Galactic
Scale, there is absolute scale. But *between* different cosmological
scales, there is complete relativity of scale. Thus we should refer to
it as discrete relativity of scale, or discrete Scale relativity, to
emphasize the fact that the relativity is *between* cosmological
Scales, not within one cosmological Scale.

This is a very big idea and a very big step for physics and cosmology.
It takes some time to get used to thinking in terms of this new form of
relativity, just as it took time to get used to Special and General
Relativity. The conceptual beauty of the Discrete Fractal paradigm
convinces me that it must be headed in the right direction. For those
who like a bit more empirical motivation, the definitive dark matter
predictions/test will let us know nature's verdict on Discrete Scale
Relativity.