Gravity is how attracted I am to your mother
Babe wake up new physics copypasta just dropped
This is wholly inaccurate. We do know what causes gravity; time dilation near matter (at least for smaller objects like the Earth). What we don’t know is why gravity, because we have yet to produce a model that matches both quantum effects and cosmic behaviors like gravity and dark matter/energy.
“Quantum gravity” is the general term for what solution would describe something that ties these two universes of behavior together. The process of decoherence isn’t terribly well understood as far as carrying effects clear from particle scale to cosmic scale.
Even then, some of the mathematical explanations from current models are plausible, but unproven.
For any physical theory, you can always just ask “why x”, like a child who constantly asks “why” over and over again to every answer, but you will always hit a bottom. There seems to be a popular mentality that “why x” is always a meaningful question, and from that, we can conclude that we don’t know anything at all, because all our beliefs rely on a “why x” we don’t know the answer to, an so they are all baseless. We can’t make any truth claims about the behavior of particles, galaxies, or anything, because you can just infinitely ask “why” until we hit a bottom and then you would say “I don’t know.”
But, personally, I find this point of view rather bizarre, because, again, it can make it seem like we don’t know anything at all and have no foundations for truth claims in the slightest, and are completely ignorant about everything. I think it makes more coherent sense to just allow for to be a bottom to the questioning. Eventually a string of “why” questions will reach a bottom, where that bottom shouldn’t be answered with “I don’t know” but it should be answered with “it is what it is,” because, for all we know, it is indeed an accurate description of reality at a fundamental level and there is nothing beneath it.
That shouldn’t be taken as a strong claim that there definitely isn’t anything beneath it, as if we should just accept our current most fundamental theories are the end of the line and stop searching. It should be taken as the weaker claim that as far as we currently know it is the bottom, and so we can indeed make truth claims upon that basis. The child might ask, “why do things experience gravity?” You might say, “time dilation near matter.” The child then may ask, “why does time dilate near matter?” In my opinion, the appropriate response to that is just, “as far as we know, it is what it is.” That could change in the future, but, given our best scientific models at the present moment, that is the end of the line of the explanation.
That seems to be a fairly controversial point, though. Most people in my experience disagree, but I don’t see how you can have a basis for truth claims at all if you claim that “why gravity” does indeed have an answer but you can’t specify it, because then it would also be baseless to claim that gravity is caused by time dilation near matter, because you’ve not established that time actually does dilate near matter, as you would be claiming that this relies on postulates which you’ve not defined. It seems, again, simpler to just take the most fundamental theories as the postulates themselves, as the fundamental axioms.
There is a popular point of view that we shouldn’t do this because scientific theories often change, so something you believe today can be proven wrong tomorrow. But then we end up never being allowed to believe anything at all. We always have to pretend we’re clueless about nature because if we believe in any of our most fundamental theories, then our beliefs could be overturned. But personally, I don’t see why this to be a problem. A person who believed Newtonian mechanics was fundamental to how nature worked back in the 1700s were shown later to be wrong, but that person’s beliefs were still closer to reality than the people who rejected it and upheld outdated Aristotelian physics, or people who refused to belief in anything at all. It is fine to later be shown to be wrong, nothing to be upset about, nothing negative about that. We are better off, imo, as treating our best physical theories as indeed fundamentally how reality works, the “bottom” so to speak, until we find new theories that show otherwise, and we change our minds with the times.
That doesn’t disallow speculation or research into potentially more fundamental theories. Theories of quantum gravity are such a speculation. They remain in the realm of speculation because no one has demonstrated in the real world that it’s actually possible to construct a device such that quantum effects and gravitational effects are both simultaneously relevant and necessary to make predictions. The theories thus describe separate domains, and there isn’t a genuine need for a new theory until we can figure out how to bridge the two domains in reality.
We don’t actually know what would happen if we bridge the two domains. We may find that our theories of turning gravity quantum are all wrong and that in fact it is quantum theory that needs to be abandoned. We may also find that the domains aren’t even bridgeable. We already know of certain physical limitations that make the domains unbridgeable, such as, building an interferometer sensitive enough to detect both gravitational and quantum effects simultaneously would collapse into a black hole. There may be more things like this we will discover later on that just render the two theories unbridgeable in physical reality.
Many physicists are convinced that the bridging will end up turning gravity quantum, but this is just a complete guess, there’s no actual empirical evidence for it other than a complete historical coincidence that when studying the strong interaction physicists happened to accidentally stumble upon mathematics that also seemed to be able to also predict a particle that could explain gravity, giving birth to String Theory. People thought it must be correct because it wasn’t intentional but discovered by accident, but this isn’t a good criterion at all for suggesting it’s correct, and ultimately the theory never went anywhere.
If we are to talk about theories replacing quantum mechanics and general relativity, we don’t have a clue what these would look like because it’s just speculation, and so it could go either way.
Gravity is the opposite of comedy.
Gravity was invented by Isaac Newton because he was invested in an airline.
That’s the real answer. Always check on whose payroll somebody is.
What do you mean no advances in the last 70 years?! In the last decade scientists detected gravity waves and imaged an actual real black hole. Also they’ve been steadily chipping at quantum gravity, give it a couple decades they’ll get there.
unless we cancel all the funding
Aren’t the first two things just experimental proves of Einsteins relativity theory from over 100 years ago?
I don’t know about quantum gravity though.
I wouldn’t say “just”, experimental proof seems huge.
But if you want theories just go to PBS space time and open anything that isnt string theory or mond.
i say do watch the ones about string theory and mond so you can see why/how they’re wrong
A theory proven is progress, don’t you think?
The far end might sound smart to you if you’ve never taken physics classes, but…
Daily reminder that physicists contribute nothing to society /j
I’ve been reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can’t put this thing down.
I find it quite marvellous that the universe contains unexplainable stuff like this, actually.
Unexplainable yet. We may be able to understand how Gravity works.
But of course you are right, there are absolutely things that can not be explained. It is (very probably) impossible to explain why our nature constants are the way they are or why forces act the way they do. The easiest answer to why they are the way they are is to say “They are this way, because if they would be a little bit different we could not ask this question”. This sentence implies, that we live in some form of a multiversum and that there are multiple universes existent (in which form doesn’t matter) but it is impossible to detect them.
No, there actually are explanations for the effects as they exist in mathematical models. The problem is we do not yet have one single model that matches both quantum effects like superposition and cosmic scale effects like gravity and dark matter/energy.
There is almost certainly some truth in those mathematical explanations, simply because it’s unlikely that something that is 99.99% provably correct has no truth associated with it.
The problem is, it needs to be 100%, with proven and confirmed experiments, not 99.99% correct, before scientists will call it a “solved” problem.
Also the anthropic principle does not prove or disprove multiverses.
There is an actual logical proof that there are propositions in mathematics that are neither provable nor refutable.
Everything we know about all space and time is technically just entirely made up by us.
Made up, and then confirmed with experimentation against actual reality.
Let’s not pretend science is literature with extra steps. It’s a process whos aim is to confirm things in a way that removes all possible alternative explanation or influence. A good experiment completely and fully removes the human element.
It came from the Labratory of The Mind, yes, the work was entirely metaphysical, but here’s the wierd part. They used that mental experimentation and applied it to real life action, and it worked. It’s like imagining you have a magic carpet for years then you stand on one and it starts flying. It began as imagination of the world around us, then when checked against reality. It works. Someone figured out that if something was passing around a sun. A planet, that it would dim the light at regular intervals. They checked, it did, that’s the only reason we know there’s planets outside our solar system. Someone checked the lumens of stars and found the data matched the theory. We use the color variations of stars in a similar way to detect more data. It’s quite remarkable. A recent discovery in gravity is that while gravity is a ‘‘constant’’, it actually fluctuates from place to place, I’m not sure if anyone figured out why yet, but if and when, how they find out, will be their imagining a reason, imagining how to check, checking in real life, and getting the data on if it’s right or not.
And now we have direct photographs of planets around other stars.
A recent discovery in gravity is that while gravity is a ‘‘constant’’, it actually fluctuates from place to place,
I guess you are referring to the c9ncept of dark matter?
To anyone who does not know what dark matter is:
Dark Matter is the “solution” for differences in the real gravitational force a star has and how much gravity it should have based on calculations. Dark matter basically is matter that does not interact with light in any form (and therefore can not be detected) but still emits gravity.
Not “gravity a star has,” but the motion of stars around/near galaxies. It is the general motion of groups of massive objects that hints that there is a lot more mass ‘around’ most (not all) galaxies than what matter we observe could possibly account for.
The ‘not all’ part is critical, because it points to something actually being there as opposed to the theory of gravity or relativity breaking down at larger scales.
Gravity is what makes my feet hurt when I stand around too long without moving about.
No, it’s pain receptors
Gravity is pain receptors. Got it.
We’re unlearning a lot today.
Gravity is just a side effect of the fundamental laziness of all things. Causality moves slower near mass, so it’s kind of relaxing to move towards it. That’s why everyone does it.
PS: There is actually a SciShow Spacetime video about gravity being an emergent property instead of a fundamental force. And no I didn’t get this from ChatGPT, I’m just that dumb when it comes to advanced physics haha.
Gravity is caused by the fact that everything in the universe sucks.
And here I thought it was just your mom
So what you are saying is micro black holes everywhere, thats genius!
It is what make it risky to jump from the Burj Kalifa, at least on the last meter.
And yet, jumping from the Burj Khalifa at 1m off the ground is not very dangerous, so it’s not the Burj Khalifa that’s doing it
And even if you jump from higher up, it’s the ground that does it, still not the Burj Khalifa.
It’s not riky while you are falling from 800m, only at the end
Wouldn’t the electromagnetic force be what makes jumping from the Burj Khalifa risky? It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop.
I mean for 57k a year it doesn’t sound too bad tbh.
I could buy an apartment with that much ~
Apartments are rented, condos are bought.
I could buy an apartment and rent it out (:< (:< evil landlord time abt to paint over a power outlet
TIL
With 57000¥?
If thats Yuan yearly, yes, its crazy how cheap the housing is outside like city center of Beijing and Shanghai. If its Yen monthly, I mean you could rent a room in Nagoya for half that, or in Tokyo for most of it.
