Like gladiators standing back to back, very close nucleons shield each other.

Gravity is simply one-dimensional links of energy pulling everything to everything else.  Such links are the only truly continuous entities in the universe.  These links in 3 dimensions plus time are the ‘fabric’ of space-time.  

Saying that gravity is “the geometry of space-time” is true but incomplete.  No chunk of matter will follow that geometry on its own.  What makes it go?  Contained in the fabric of space-time is the energy which pulls bodies together.

A single energy link is now posited as the long sought Graviton.  As such, it could have four possible orientations, with spin or axial flow in either direction.

As we shall see, there is no classical – relativity conflict.  Newton and Einstein were both right.

Note: Much of the nature and characteristics of gravity are brought out on other pages in comparison to the other forces, and need not be duplicated here.

Sadly, nobody has ever found a material that could block gravity.  The reason is simple enough; molecules and atoms are mostly space and gravity always gets through.

Gravity links get around particles of matter in our atoms but what about the particles themselves?  They are the only things solid enough to prevent any continuous string of energy from passing right through.  

In other words any solid, real particle of matter is a little gravity shield.

The most common example of gravity shielding was hiding in the nucleus and we are about to discover just how extremely powerful it is.

While not 100% effective, external gravity is practically eliminated in the shielded zone between nucleons.

"So what?"  "Gravity is not a significant factor on the atomic scale", may be an immediate response.

That unfortunately is a misinterpretation just as compelling and ironic as the old notion that the sun orbits the earth.

Gravity actually has a formidable presence on the atomic scale.  We tend to forget it is there however, because pulls from everything in the immediate vicinity and from millions of stars in all different directions mostly cancel each other out.

All of those pulls from different directions also account for gravity being its own worst enemy.  These millions of competing pulls make it almost impossible to establish a new link to a temporarily saturated body.  Its complement of links is continually changing (Anim. 1) but a link from somewhere else usually gets there first.

Two objects on a table are not pulled together by gravity because most attempted links fail.  Subsequent links will succeed however, when they have the good fortune to replace a link that has just failed somewhere else.  Gravity thus ends up being wasted in all different directions.

Masses of bodies and the inverse square law still apply, but the real reason for the comparative weakness of gravity is simply due to the fierce competition.  This factor reduces the effect of gravity by 11 orders of magnitude and is called “G”; we just never knew what it stood for before.

Competition from elsewhere is thwarted between any two mutually shielded nucleons.  Gravity is finally allowed to be all that it can be, and that's quite an understatement.

With a very short distance between nucleons and negligible competition, gravity has a much better chance at success, right from the start.

These gravity links stand in marked contrast to others that are scattered.  With a trail blazed, others instantly join the easier path.  The growing density of links actually guides new ones by confining them to the straight and narrow.

The bigger and denser the route becomes, the faster it grows.  The growing path makes it ever easier for new links between the nucleons and at the same time makes it ever harder for other links to break in from "unwanted" directions.

This doubly effective positive feedback creates an avalanche effect, snapping from a state of almost no gravity links to exponential numbers. 

The gravity links that establish in the shielded zone between nucleons are so numerous that it actually becomes the Strong Force (Anim. 2).

Discoveries of shields and force unification, are mutually corroborating...... how about that?

A corollary of course is that gravity is indeed quantified but the quanta are too small for us to measure individually with today's instruments. 

We know that there is a big difference between gravity and the strong force in how they operate over distance.  The strong force fades rapidly with increased particle separation and that’s obviously because we lose the shielding.   Less obvious however, is why the strong force also gets weaker if we attempt to bring the particles even closer.

If we dig deeper we see that our nucleons are actually composed of 3 quarks. (Anim. 3)

Notice how many of the links in the strong bundle cross over between the quarks.  If the particles get any closer, the links start working at cross-purposes and the vector result weakens.  Other gravity links on the particles then pull them back to optimum distance again. 

Like a scissors gate that can be compressed only so far, a hard limit is also reached that does not allow the particles to actually touch. 

In Anim. 3, notice how the dense bundles between the red, green, blue are 1:1, quark-to-quark.  There are fewer crossovers here and that is why the internal quarks are even closer and so tightly bound.

We have only recently been able to separate quarks during the first few microseconds of collisions between heavy nuclei.