It's over my head! 8o

Its a model for what happens at many different scales.
But still an experiment.
Another one is the guy sitting on a stool that has a bearing so he can spin around.
He pushes himself around with his legs and arms extended out as far as possible.
At this stage he is spinning slowly, but then he pulls his arms and legs in towards the center of the stool's axis and spins faster. Much faster.
He has converted his angular momentum.

It shows you something fundamental about matter and energy.
Einstein said, "Look to the heavens and learn."
I think what he meant by that is that out there is what's normal.
That's where the truth is.
Here on Earth its more like a special case. Everything gets more complicated on a planet because too many things are happening at the same time.
Have you seen the videos NASA did with blobs of water on the space station?
Rotating Sphere of Water in Microgravity on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxyfiBGCwhQ&NR=1

Hah that's cool! That particular demonstration is a function of density rather than mass/gravity though...uh at least directly. Oh wait you're saying the angular momentum is gravity-like. Hm. *brain hurts* Uhh look pretty bubbles! :D

Oh wait, I think I just had a flash of mild hint of understanding of what you might have meant. Uh... Wait. Hm no okay, so if gravity can be expressed as a function of angular momentum, how to explain that we're attracted to the center of Earth from all sides of the globe, rather than just from one--not to mention not being flung off into space, etc? Hrm... We aren't less dense than space so the cool bubble video doesn't seem to help there. (Okay now I am much less confident I had any clue as to your insight. 8o)

YET ANOTHER EDIT:
Ohh but centrifugal force, which I guess you could say relies on angular momentum, is a good way to simulate gravity! And also Einstein proposed that gravity can be seen as curves in the plane of spacetime, so in that sense it really would be angular momentum stuff!

If its a disk (or cylinder, depending on the conditions) then its not going to make a spherical form unless you "stack" the disks. The largest one is at the equator. The forces that seek the center of each disk blend or blur at minute boundaries but there appears to be some turbulence because they have slightly different rotational speeds as they match the edges of the sphere.


Take a look at Jupiter.
Since Jupiter is a fast-spinning gas giant, what is happening is very visible, including the turbulence, which is probably more extensive than it would be if you could actually see Earth in the same way. On Earth most of this is invisible, except for clues like atmospheric conditions: jetstreams, trade-winds, the horse-lattitudes, etc.

Edits: trying to get rid of extra information that only makes it more confusing.

Interesting quote by Hawking here:

I wonder what that means exactly.

With all due respect to Hawking, this is glossing over the subject. Gravity can't exist on its own, but is the result of the interaction of the Universe. It is a system and everything is inter-related.

Hawking does like to make catchy soundbite statements that can be somewhat misleading when taken at face value, so that could be all that is, yeah--in fact the article is pretty much about a series of such statements he's made relating to God and the universe over the years.

None the less its true.
Gravity is the organizer of all the scattered elements, causing them to seek whatever singular motion that develops during and from this closure.
You can't call gravity something separate, because anything that is affected by gravity is also part of it.

You could consider everything being made out of "slacker-particles." No mass wants to do anything unless it is the easiest and least stressful path it can take. The system of organization tends to refine motion into a center of rotation where it is least stressful. Angular motion is stressful because it causes stretching and distortion as the mass is forced to move at several different rates. The matter itself seeks the center of rotation where the angular motion is minimized.

Hee-hee, slackers. ;D Still, this is making me want to know even more what exactly he might have had in mind there.

Professor Hawking writes in small bursts because it must take him a great deal of time to write anything. So I imagine he saves up, reduces, encapsulates, and limits what he has to write to span the most information.
He might welcome a perfect interface with some machine that could just take his thoughts and print or speak them or put them directly to video.

We talk about going out into space to explore strange new worlds, but he lives there.