Comments on and Comments on Comments on Verlinde's paper "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton"

Abstract

We offer some, hopefully clarifying, comments on Verlinde's recent claim that gravity is an entropic force. A suitable identification of quantities shows that both formulations of Newtonian gravity, the classical and the thermodynamical one, are actually equivalent. It turns out that some additional assumptions made by Verlinde are unnecessary. However, when it comes to General Relativity there remain some gaps in the argument. We comment on whether this identification can be done also for electrostatics. Finally, some thoughts on the use of this reinterpretation are offered.