That's tautological, and basically wrong. This is something that they do teach to school children, but then when they get older, they ask, "what force other than gravity causes the ball to go down into the pit"? It's a good question. |
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Gravity isn't a force, it's a dip in space-time. If you experience the 'force' of gravity, you're just sliding in the dip. That's why Newton's formula F = m * a (Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration) works when you're calculating the force of gravity on an object. a = 9.81 m/s^2 here. You're just accelerating down the dip |
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That's tautological, and basically wrong. This is something that they do teach to school children, but then when they get older, they ask, "what force other than gravity causes the ball to go down into the pit"? It's a good question. |
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I've been thinking about that too, thank you for your reply |
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But then gravity is also hyptothesised to be due to gravitons, which would make them one of four basic force-causing particles. |
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That's because the ideas about gravity don't lead to General Relativity. |
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So why are gravitons needed? |
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They're not. Gravitons were invented long after GR as a sort of apologetics for the up-and-coming field of QCD. With the finalizing of the Standard Model, it became clear that there probably would, some day, be a gravity particle, so they just fudged it in. Gravitons are not required for or are a result of GR. |
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I don't understand; are gravitons real things? Or are they just an abstraction which arises as a result of GR? Which is it which causes the other? |
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Okay. So they don't actually exist. |
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That's part of what I'm interested in... how would you explain the photoelectric effect? |
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The photoelectric effect was discovered long before the study of more complicated types of waves, such as solitons. I don't know the math here, because it's incredibly complicated, but I do know that light can't be both a particle and a wave. It can appear to be both, but those two concepts are, in fact, mutually exclusive. Unless you redefine the terms themselves, of course, but that's wordplay. My point is, I wouldn't be surprised if the apparent particle nature of photons was due to some sort of artifact, sort of like how a phonon isn't really a physical particle. |
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At rest means that no real force is acting upon you. Near a gravitating body, the only way to be at rest is to orbit the the body in some way. Near the surface of the Earth, these orbits are almost perfect parabolas, which is why thrown objects follow parabolic trajectories. Note that during the entire flight, a thrown object never "feels" gravity, whereas a person standing on the ground does. In fact, the person not moving is in a sort of non-inertial reference frame, being accelerated by the normal force of the ground. |
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Gravity is very not awesome. |
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Strange how it's the least understood of all the forces. |
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Last edited by Lucid Lobster; 02-14-2009 at 05:46 AM.
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To be honest there is no 'lack of understanding' about gravity. It's very well understood what causes it. |
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That’s a far reach, knowing what causes something doesn’t necessarily mean that you know the minute nature of it, and we obviously do not have enough understanding of gravity to make such a postulation. Yes we can identify the basics, we can use gravity and make sound predictions regarding the constellation, send spacecraft to planets, predict the motion of celestial bodies, etc… We have qualitative AND quantitative predictions that agree with observations. However we do not have the fundamental understanding to manipulate it for propulsion. Or make modifications for that matter. We simply do not have enough understanding of gravity to repel a force large enough to have flight without rockets. This should be quite possible considering how incredibly weak gravity is. In short there is a lack per-se’ of understanding gravity, our understanding of it is incomplete just as all scientific theories are incomplete, because they do not – and can not - exist in isolation. They relate in some way to every other scientific theory. No scientific theory is completely understood or “finished” sort-of-speak. |
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True. Gravity is the "least" understood force even if we do know the 32 feet per second per second rhyme. The only practical use that we can even find for it so far is to power primitive waterwheels, ensure that bombs hit the ground when dropped and falling bread lands buttered side down. When/if we "figure out" gravity we can negate it and get to Alpha Centauri without it taking 100,000 years and an infinite amount of fuel. And once we conquer gravity inertia can't far behind. Our 767's will then be able to make those amazing 20,000 mph right angle turns in mid air just like the UFO's that everybody but me sees apparently on a daily basis. As far as the speed of gravity, there are still opposing theories as to whether gravity propogates at the speed of light or causes interactions instantaneously like quantum entanglement does. |
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Last edited by Lucid Lobster; 02-15-2009 at 04:56 PM.
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