Obviously I don't agree with Rothman. As I see it, Rothman misunderstands how science works.
Heh - coming from you, almost everybody misunderstands how science works.
A bit more detail. If I dig a deep shaft into the earth, and climb down that shaft, the gravitational force that I experience is only that due to the part of the earth that is nearer to the center than I am. The gravitational attraction of the parts farther from the center than my position turn out to cancel out. I am guessing that Rothman is not aware of that, and mistakenly assumes that the gravitational attractions is the same as if all of the mass were concentrated at the center of gravity.
Since he is a cosmologist that has taught at Harvard and Princeton I am fairly sure he doesn't make that mistaken assumption. He's just pointing out that technically the gravitational attraction of two bodies approaches infinity as the distance between them approaches zero in Newtons law of universal gravitation.
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