Gravity is known to affect the energy of photons. But it isn’t immediately clear how this happens. Especially if we don’t have a clear idea of what energy is. Let us therefore start with some basics regarding the nature of energy.

The basics

The strict particle model proposed in my book has energy stored as size of subatomic particles. All energies, regardless of type, are stored as size.

When lifting a wood block from the floor up to a shelf, the size of subatomic particles in the block increase by a tiny bit. The same is true when throwing the block through the air. However, dropping the block results in no change in size. Because the sum of potential and kinetic energy remains unchanged during the fall. There is no change in the total energy of the block before it hits the ground.

Field theory

An alternative to this model is to have potential energy stored in the field between the block and the ground, and kinetic energy stored as motion. Lifting the block from the floor will in this model put potential energy into the field. Dropping the block will result in a transfer of potential energy stored in the field to kinetic energy in the block, with gravity facilitating this transfer.

The problem with this is that it’s all pure math, with no simple mechanism to explain it.

However, the advantage with a field theory is that once we accept the idea of energy stored in a field, we have a ready supply of energy to draw on whenever needed.

This comes in handy when we are confronted with such phenomena as gravitational redshift.

Gravitational redshift

When light travels away from a massive body, it looses energy. When it travels towards a massive body, it gains energy. This gravitational redshift, as it’s called, is experimentally confirmed. So, it requires an explanation.

Photons passing by, moving towards and moving away from a massive body

Using a field theory, we can simply say that photons give up energy to the field when they travel away from massive bodies, and that they absorb energy from the field when they travel towards such bodies.

However, a strict particle model cannot use such an explanation. Because no energy is stored outside of particles. When particles gain energy, other particles must loose energy. There has to be interaction between particles.

But luckily for us, there are two ways to solve this problem, both by the use of an aether.

Aether as energy storage

When we combine an aether with the idea that a pilot wave accompanies every photon, we can imagine a mechanism for energy transfer between the aether and visible light.

Zero-point photons, abundantly available in the aether, soak up excess energy of outgoing visible photons. The aether becomes a little hotter because of this, and can therefore facilitate a corresponding blueshift of incoming  photons.

Note that there is no need for any direct contact between the incoming and outgoing photons, because the aether serves as an intermediary energy storage.

This is a simple and straight forward solution. However, it suffers from a weakness in that it does not explain how the aether knows how much energy to add or subtract.

This brings us to our other solution, which goes as follows.

Gravity as a modifier of the aether

In this solution we note that gravity attracts photons, but not neutrinos. So, gravity has the effect of altering the aether that surrounds gravitational bodies.

The aether, which is a mix of zero-point photons and neutrinos, is richer in photons near gravitational bodies than farther away. Consequently, there’s fewer neutrinos, and with fewer neutrino’s the electric force becomes less strong.

The electric force is in turn important for particles of inertial matter which are bigger where neutrinos are more abundant, and smaller where they are less abundant.

It follows from this that particles of inertial matter are slightly smaller close to gravitational bodies than farther away.

So there’s no need for incoming photons to gain energy. Because photons will appear bluer simply by virtue of being relatively larger.

Conversely, when a given amount of energy is emitted by particles on the surface of a gravitational body, the amount is in relation to the particles as they are at that surface. So, the energy will be measured to be less for an observer in space where particles of inertial matter are bigger.

This follows the same logic as I’ve used to explain the Mercury anomaly, and is therefore my preferred solution.