Hydrodynamic theory of gravitation and inertia

In previous articles published in this journal, the author presented a hydrodynamic model of an electron as a sink and the positron as a source for the continuous flow of an ideal incompressible “primordial” fluid from source to sink in three-dimensional space and returning from a sink to a source through a “wormhole tube” in four-dimensional space-time. This tube was referred to as an “ether string” because it could serve as a medium for the transmission of wave energy with the speed of light. It was postulated that linear vortices could exist in the primordial fluid and that an electron core and a positron core linked by an ether string would always reside at the boundary surface of the cylindrical core of a linear vortex. The vortex field caused the ether string to be tightly wound into a helix referred to as an “ether spring.” It was explained how the ether spring from the electron and the ether spring from the positron with antiparallel collinear spin vectors in a modified neutral pion could become intertwined into an “ether rope.” In the present paper, it is explained how the force of gravity attracting one massive body towards a second massive body can be due to the axial tension and curvature of ether ropes linking the two bodies. The number of these ropes depends on the masses of the two bodies and their separation distance as well as the total mass of the rest of the bodies in a closed universe and their average distance (taken as the radius of the universe). The inertial reactive force on an accelerated massive body is due to the axial tension and curvature of the ether ropes linking the body to the rest of the universe.