Gravity is something like magnetism with the exception that the stuff of gravity only attracts other stuff. Scientists posit that there exists a particle called a graviton that forms the “gravitational field.” This so-called particle has never been detected either directly or indirectly.

I prefer a different and more direct approach when postulating what gravity is. Consider the atom. It’s the smallest practical thing that the stuff of the universe is made of. And all this stuff has one thing in common: an attraction to other stuff. We call this attraction gravity. What I propose is that the graviton does not exist but that the atom is a type of monopole, a monopole, that’s not electric nor magnetic, but gravitational. Monopoles are supposed to be single electric charges that are either positive or negative, but doesn’t gravity satisfy the single-pole requirement exactly? Further than that, as atoms collect themselves gravitationally or otherwise they form ever-larger monopoles. That is why stuff of increasing size and mass, including planets, stars, black holes, and even galaxies have an attraction to each other.

I realize that the idea that galaxies as monopoles is a stretch since they do not consist of contiguous matter. However, there exists a problem today in astronomy where stars in the outer edges of spiral galaxies are rotating about the galaxy’s center at a rate faster than they should. The introduction of the idea of dark matter was the ad hoc solution to the problem. It seems more likely that gravity as we currently understand it does not act the way we think it does. The idea that a galaxy acts as a monopole of gravity seems more likely to me. In other words, galaxies act as a single unit. In the case of spiral galaxies, they act more like saucers than a collection of independent stars in motion. Look at the rings of Saturn and other planets, don’t they rotate as a unit?

The idea that atoms are monopoles of gravity and that atoms grow into ever-larger forms of matter and that each layer of matter has an attraction to every other layer seems obvious when you view the universe and its contents in a general way. Scientists have gone much deeper than the mere observation of the atom and its behavior; they have discovered that even the atom is divisible and is constructed of much smaller and stranger entities. This seems to be the way of the universe. Building block upon building block creates the unending stuff that composes everything. The world of the subatomic is stranger than we imagine, but thank God, from the level of atoms on, the world at least seems somewhat reasonable.

Resolved: monopoles of gravity exist, gravitons do not exist, and gravity and its influence on the structure of the universe are explained in a simple manner.