ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity

Imagine you have two friends, let's call them Alice and Bob. Alice is really heavy, and Bob is really light. Now imagine they are standing on opposite sides of a trampoline. When Alice stands in the middle of the trampoline, it stretches down a lot because of her weight. But when Bob stands on the trampoline, it doesn't stretch down very much at all.

This is kind of like how gravity works. Gravity is what makes things feel heavy or fall down when we drop them. But in the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of gravity, gravity isn't caused by things like mass and weight. Instead, it's caused by something called "non-locality."

Non-locality is like when you have two toys, one at home and one at grandma's house. When you move one toy at home, the toy at grandma's house moves too, even though they're far apart. Scientists think that maybe gravity works like this too, with objects affecting each other from far away, even if they're not touching.

So in the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of gravity, things are attracted to each other because of this non-locality, not because of how heavy they are. It's kind of like how Alice's weight made the trampoline stretch a lot, and that attracted Bob to her side.

Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how all this works, but the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of gravity is one idea that helps explain how gravity could work in a different way than we usually think about it.