Gravity Isn’t Real? The Mind-Bending Theory That Could Change Everything You Know About the Universe

November 25, 1915. Inside a packed lecture hall at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Albert Einstein stood before a breathless audience. With chalk in hand, he scribbled his final equation on the blackboard and rewrote the laws of reality itself.

Gravity, he claimed, wasn’t a force pulling objects together. It was space itself, bending and stretching. The world was in awe.

For decades, Einstein’s theory seemed perfect. Then it couldn’t explain the cosmos.

In the 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin made a puzzling discovery. Galaxies were spinning far faster than Einstein’s equations predicted. By all logic, those galaxies should have torn themselves apart. Yet they remained intact.

Physicists suspected dark matter, a mysterious, invisible mass that supposedly filled the universe. But after decades of searching, no one had ever found it.

That’s when Dutch physicist Erik Verlinde stepped in with a question that stunned the scientific world: What if gravity isn’t real?

Imagine feeling drawn to someone across a crowded room. No force is physically pulling you, yet you feel an undeniable attraction. Verlinde believed gravity, like that feeling, may not be a true force but a side effect of deeper patterns we can’t yet see.

What if the force that holds the planets in place and keeps your feet planted on the ground is nothing more than an illusion?

If gravity isn’t real, what else might be quietly shaping the universe?

This question didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the result of years of exploration, not in the realm of gravity itself, but in something far more unexpected: information theory.

Verlinde’s Groundbreaking Gravity Theory Explained

Verlinde’s journey began not with gravity itself, but with information theory. This is the science of how data is stored, organized, and transmitted.

While studying black holes, Verlinde became fascinated by the holographic principle. This theory suggests that all the information in our 3D universe might be encoded like a hologram projected from a 2D surface.

This concept turned Verlinde’s thinking upside down.

Imagine standing in a foggy room. You can’t see people clearly, but their blurred outlines distort the mist. Even though you can’t see them directly, you sense their presence. Verlinde believed something similar was happening with gravity. What we perceive as gravity may actually be the result of unseen information patterns rippling through space.

But Verlinde knew this idea alone wasn’t enough. He needed a mechanism, something that explained how this invisible information translated into gravitational behavior.

Entropy’s Role

That’s when he turned to entropy, a concept from thermodynamics that describes how systems naturally move toward disorder.

Entropy drives countless everyday experiences. Think about what happens when you pour milk into coffee. At first, the two liquids are separate. But without any force pushing them together, the milk swirls and spreads on its own until the mixture reaches equilibrium. This tendency to spread and balance, without any ‘pulling force,’ fascinated Verlinde.

He began to suspect that gravity might behave similarly, not as an independent force, but as a side effect of information naturally redistributing itself.

To illustrate this, Verlinde introduced an analogy. Imagine a crowded room filled with people. At first, they’re tightly grouped in clusters. But over time, they drift apart, spreading until the room feels balanced. No one forces this movement, yet it seems guided by an invisible pattern.

Verlinde believed gravity was just like that, a natural byproduct of information organizing itself across space.

In 2010, he published his groundbreaking paper titled “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton.” He claimed that gravity is not a fundamental force but an emergent effect of information arranging itself.

Dark Matter and the Gravity Puzzle

His theory suggested something even more radical. Dark matter might not exist at all. Verlinde claimed that the strange gravitational effects observed in galaxies weren’t caused by invisible particles, but by space itself contracting and reshuffling information in low-density regions.

For a brief moment, Verlinde’s theory seemed poised to rewrite modern physics. Some physicists compared his ideas to Einstein’s breakthroughs. Others remained skeptical, arguing his theory lacked the precision needed to replace existing models.

Yet Verlinde pressed on, determined to prove that gravity itself was not what we had always believed.

What If Gravity Is Just an Illusion?

Verlinde’s boldest breakthrough came when he introduced a striking analogy, one that turned the concept of gravity into something surprisingly familiar.

Imagine stretching a rubber band between your fingers. As you pull one end, the band naturally wants to snap back. This happens not because of a separate ‘pulling force,’ but because tension within the material drives it back to balance.

Curious how this works? Try this interactive simulation to see how gravity behaves in different scenarios.

Verlinde claimed that gravity behaves the same way. Instead of a ‘pulling force,’ gravity is simply the result of space naturally trying to restore order when information within it becomes chaotic.

To reinforce this, Verlinde introduced the concept of holographic screens. These are invisible cosmic boundaries that encode information about the structure of the universe. As matter moves across these screens, the encoded information shifts, and gravity emerges as a side effect of this reshuffling.

Imagine building a jigsaw puzzle. Each puzzle piece contains information about the larger picture. The ‘force’ that brings the puzzle together isn’t really a force at all. It’s just the natural outcome of pieces finding their correct positions. Verlinde believed that gravity behaves similarly, a byproduct of information patterns settling into equilibrium.

In 2016, Verlinde expanded his theory to claim that dark matter, the invisible mass that physicists believed was holding galaxies together, might not exist at all. Instead, he argued that the extra gravitational pull observed in galaxies was the result of space itself contracting in low-density regions.

For a time, Verlinde’s theory seemed unstoppable. Observations from distant galaxies matched his predictions better than traditional dark matter models. Astronomers even began testing his ideas using data from the cosmic microwave background, the faint radiation left over from the Big Bang.

But Verlinde’s theory soon faced challenges. While some galaxy models aligned with his predictions, others didn’t. His model struggled to explain gravitational behavior in certain galaxy clusters and planetary systems.

Yet despite the setbacks, Verlinde’s theory had introduced a radical new idea. Gravity itself might be nothing more than an illusion created by deeper information patterns.

How Verlinde’s Theory Challenges Modern Physics

If Verlinde’s theory is correct, then gravity, the force we’ve trusted for centuries, may not be fundamental at all.

This revelation could change everything. It suggests that other forces, like electromagnetism or the strong nuclear force, might also be illusions created by deeper information patterns.

Some researchers now believe Verlinde’s ideas could unlock clues about quantum computing, black hole physics, and even consciousness itself.

Even more intriguingly, Verlinde’s theory invites us to rethink familiar experiences. Could the strange ‘pull’ we sometimes feel, toward certain people, places, or memories, be part of the same hidden informational patterns that shape the cosmos?

Could This Theory Rewrite Our Understanding of the Universe?

If gravity isn’t real, if it’s merely a side effect of hidden information, what else might be quietly guiding our lives?

Could the feeling that draws you toward a forgotten memory or a distant place reflect something deeper — a cosmic web of unseen patterns shaping your path?

So the next time you feel an unexplainable pull, to a person, a memory, or a place, ask yourself:

What if that invisible force isn’t just a feeling, but the universe itself, quietly reshuffling reality to bring you closer to what you’re meant to find?