Browsing the New York Times, as you do, led me to a paper “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton" by Erik Verlinde, a string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, in which he argues that gravity is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Inevitably, this is controversial, with another string theorist noting: "Some people have said it can’t be right, others that it’s right and we already knew it – some that it’s right and profound – and some more that it's right but trivial" which about covers the bases, and reminds me about some of the ideas that I hear talked about. Commenting on a seminar where the paper was presented, the moderator said: "The end result was that everyone else didn’t understand it, including people who initially thought that it did make some sense to them.' Just like some of the seminars I go to.
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