KC001

The idea is that as the paper/grid expands into all directions, the scalar value at point X of the paper/grid describes how much the mass of the celestial body decreases the expansion speed in that point of space. So it affects the expansion paper/grid only, not the regular movement vector of the celestial body. The more I think of this, it's the exact inverse presentation of "space curving or falling into the mass" model. Instead of space falling into the mass, it expands as does all the matter and at the same time some of the space gets "overridden" by the expanding mass.

Unfortunately this is where we are exceeding my physics and math skills and I don't have any answer to your questions :-/ I was trying to figure out an alternative way to simulate the gravity effects without calculating the traditional force/acceleration vectors for the simulation animation frames. In my model you obviously still need to calculate some parameter (based on distance and mass from all objects) how much the paper/grid expansion slows down at any given point of the paper/grid. To get this right, the values would need to be adjusted so that they match observations of the real world (as in any model, really). This should result in a similarly shaped curve as traditional gravity's strength at any given point in space (but with the value being a scalar instead of a direction/force vector). I guess this means you could say that my model is using traditional gravity as a starting point, but tries to reach it's actual effects by different means. Hmm. That being said, I think my original post might then have been somewhat misleading: If the slowdown of the paper/grid expansion depends on the mass and distance of the objects, it sounds like it's most probably going to be based on the traditional gravity formula. But then again, as mentioned above, the forces wouldn't be used as directional vectors, but as a scalar value which hits brakes to the expansion of the paper. I think this is the exact point of my model which needs a closer look to see if it breaks down into non working model or if it has potential to work in a simulation. The idea intends to take motion and orbits into account. If I can simulate this model properly in my head, I think the orbit should happen something like this: Earth sits stationary on the paper. Meteor is passing by the Earth. As the grid around Earth expands slower around the Earth, the passing meteor gets pulled towards it. The accelerating expansion of the paper curves the path of the meteor even more and thus it starts going around the Earth. Note that this is where my powers of imagining the simulation in my head start to have their limits and the whole thing should be made into a proper computer simulation to verify if it actually works in practise or not. I'm now entering the "guessing zone".

Ghideon got my idea right. And as Strange pointed out: there could be a problem with more than one object floating in the gravitational field. :-/ I would need to think about this idea/model some more to see how the problem manifests itself. Here's a quick stream of mind. I'm thinking as I'm writing: Example #1: Meteor sits between moon and Earth in such a place that Earth+Moon gravity would cancel each other out (for the meteor that is). Moon/Earth/meteor would all start their journey from standing still. Then the Moon and Earth slowly start "accelerating" towards the meteor in between them as they slowly "eat up" the paper/grid that's left underneath them while getting bigger. Eventually all three would crash together. Example #2: Earth/Moon/meteor form a 90 degree angle (meteor is on the side of Earth compared to the Moon). Each object stands still before the simulation starts. As the grid/paper expands, both Earth and Moon "hit brakes" from their own respective direction to the location of paper/grid where the meteor is at any given moment. If I can visualise it properly in my head, the meteor should start "falling" to the side of the Earth where the Moon is. I think I visualize this in my head in a very similar way to the "space falling into mass"/waterfall approach, but by doing it kind of the opposite way: space and matter expands and mass hits brakes to the expansion.The visualizations would be fairly similar between waterfall and this model. If I remember my own idea correctly (it's been many years, note), my original idea was that it could be the time itself slowing down and thus also slowing down the expansion of the grid near masses. I.e. time moves slower so the paper/grid expansion can't keep up with the expansion of the matter over it. So slight changes in "local speed of time" would eventually cause the gravity effects. This was the point when my brain started hurting by thinking how to simulate it and I opted to the simpler version I presented in this thread

About 15 years ago or so I had this idea how gravity could be simulated without traditional gravity itself being used at all. Thought I would share the idea with you to see if it raises any interesting discussions: Imagine space as a 2D grid on a paper. Make the grid/paper scale larger and larger every second. All matter you put on the paper would also scale larger and larger at the same rate as the paper/grid does. This means that nothing out of ordinary would be happening from the point of view of a human standing on that paper: everything seems to stay the same size and at equal distance to other objects on that paper. No gravity effects would be seen. For the outside observer though the paper and the human standing on the paper would get larger and larger. NOW: All matter you put on the paper/grid, would slow down the expansion of the grid under and near that matter. The more matter/mass the area has, the more the expansion slows down. The matter itself would still get larger and larger at equal rate to the general expansion of the paper itself. Now for the person standing on that paper, the nearby objects would seem to start moving towards each other (gravity kind of effect) since they get larger and larger faster than the paper/grid is expanding around them. So the objects are basically “growing larger, thus seemingly getting closer”. Still no proper gravity that accelerates thing towards each other, even though now nearby objects would seem to be slowly getting closer and closer, as they get larger and the paper/grid expands too slowly for the objects not to eventually touch each other. To get the nearby objects to accelerate towards each other (just like regular gravity works) the paper/grid expansion rate itself would need to be accelerating. Just like regular space seems to be doing according to astronomers. Black hole sitting on the paper/grid would have enough mass to be hitting brakes to the paper/grid expansion altogether OR at least enough so the expansion would be dramatically slower compared to surrounding areas. I believe this can be simulated on a computer fairly easily. Any thoughts about this idea? Extra idea: I'm not intimately familiar with dark matter's effects, but maybe it could be simulated by strong masses "carving" permanent (or semi permanent) bumps/wrinkles into the grid and/or paper as the masses move around the paper?