How real scientists react to General Relativity being trillions off in a prediction - by Jennie&Tim
thefonz on 5/4/2006 at 07:09
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
No, it's a force like any other. Like the electromagnetic force, the strong force, or the weak force, all which have propogation speeds and carrier particles.
Exactly. Just like the Sith and Jedi.
Fafhrd on 5/4/2006 at 07:33
what's the propogation speed of a midichlorian?
Hesche on 5/4/2006 at 12:30
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
what's the propogation speed of a midichlorian?
3,71 Cockren ...too easy.
Although a bit disturbing to do a Google search for COCKren during work. OMG, the computing guys will find me!
Agent Monkeysee on 5/4/2006 at 15:15
Quote Posted by thefonz
Exactly. Just like the Sith and Jedi.
It's like you can see that joke coming but there's nothing you can do about it.
Vigil on 5/4/2006 at 17:06
To do so would violate causality.
trevor the sheep on 5/4/2006 at 21:58
Quote Posted by fett
*Bite my ass you hack.
OH I won't BITE until these "scientists" actually reach a consensus over the holes in this SUPPOSED ass. They've gotten things like this wrong before, I don't want to be caught BITING an ass, of which the existence is not yet even AGREED upon!
Because, you know, I'd end up looking silly.
demagogue on 6/4/2006 at 00:19
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
No, it's a force like any other. Like the electromagnetic force, the strong force, or the weak force, all which have propogation speeds and carrier particles.
Not exactly like any other force the way I learned it. The first thing my teacher said about gravity: it's not a force. Everything can be explained using curved geometry without having to have anything "pushing/pulling" anything else.
When you are in free fall, you don't feel any accelleration ... so if you were in a falling elevator, you wouldn't even know it from being in space. But if you were being pulled by a magnet (or presumably the weak or strong force), you'd feel the accelleration (right?).
Since my understanding is still so-so, I don't know if I'm just being pedantic and it really doesn't matter, just semantics, and maybe I'm missing something obvious. But since my teacher made such a big point about it I thought I'd say something for his sake. Sorry if I'm missing something. I'll be the first to admit I don't know what I'm talking about if you know something I don't, though.
It does have a propogation speed, though, (of c, so when a large sunflare erupts, it takes about 8 minutes to screw with satellite orbits), and a field (where we get tidal forces), and waves, and they say it has carrier particles, the graviton, but I gather they're still waiting to find one.
So it's a lot like the other forces, but it's always the odd-ball out.
By the way, can anyone explain why gravity is so odd compared to the other forces? I've heard different things, but was always curious.
dj_ivocha on 6/4/2006 at 00:51
Quote Posted by demagogue
But if you were being pulled by a magnet (or presumably the weak or strong force), you'd feel the accelleration (right?).
But if you were being pulled by that magnet your whole life, you wouldn't feel it now, would you?
Agent Monkeysee on 6/4/2006 at 02:09
Quote Posted by demagogue
Not exactly like any other force the way I learned it. The first thing my teacher said about gravity: it's not a force. Everything can be explained using curved geometry without having to have anything "pushing/pulling" anything else.
Under General Relativity it can be explained using geometry, but that won't fly in Quantum Mechanics. QM describes it as any other force, with a carrier particle and everything.
Gravity is notable in that we haven't found conclusive evidence of the carrier particle but the theory is solid and there's no reason to believe we won't find it.
The point is gravity can be described a lot of different ways depending on the model you're using, but under the Standard Model it's just another force.
Quote Posted by demagogue
It does have a propogation speed, though, (of c, so when a large sunflare erupts, it takes about 8 minutes to screw with satellite orbits), and a field (where we get tidal forces), and waves, and they say it has carrier particles, the graviton, but I gather they're still waiting to find one.
You're thinking of something else as a sunflare wouldn't affect the sun's gravitational field and thus not impart gravitational effects on our satellites. If it was that easy to detect there wouldn't be any controversy over gravitons. What you're probably thinking of is the electromagnetic storm a sunflare causes, which does fuck with our satellites but doesn't have anything to do with gravity.
Quote Posted by demagogue
So it's a lot like the other forces, but it's always the odd-ball out.
By the way, can anyone explain why gravity is so odd compared to the other forces? I've heard different things, but was always curious.
If we find the graviton then it
isn't the odd-ball out, except it's by far the weakest of the four fundamental forces.
TheGreatGodPan on 6/4/2006 at 03:26
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
No, it's a force like any other. Like the electromagnetic force, the strong force, or the weak force, all which have propogation speeds and carrier particles.
I remember always reading how the equations for electro-magnetic and gravitational forces were nearly identical (constant*thing1*thing2/radius^2) and that all four were supposed to be like that, but so far I haven't found anything like that for strong & weak nuclear forces. I guess those aren't meant for laypeople. It would seem rather tricky trying to balance out one of them in the lab with gravity or (more likely) electro-magnetism to find out the constant. The strong one has to balance out e/m to keep the protons from splitting, but any split/joining would be a nuclear reaction that would seem to release a lot of energy and make it harder to make other measurements. The electro-weak one I'm even foggier on, because all I hear is that it determines whether or not neutrons decay. I don't know much about nuclear physics (like how you get energy from a nuclear reaction when you have the same number of protons/neutrons, apparently those have different masses in different nuclei, with iron lowest, but there's still one official mass for the particles), and that force least of all. The decay produces an electron and proton, which should normally be attracted to each other by e/m, so the weak force must repel them, but is overpowered by the other protons & neutrons in the nucleus' strong and/or e/m forces when the nucleus isn't too big. The strong & weak forces are only significant on extremely small scales, which implies to me that the radius in their equations must be to a higher power than two, but the way I'd heard the reason explained for the squared term for the other forces was geometric (area of the surface of a sphere, apparently of varying area-density of force-carrying particles), and I can't think off the top of my head why strong & weak operate differently. I'm hoping it doesn't require quantum mechanics to understand. I've been thinking of taking a course in quantum out of curiosity so I'll actually know how the equations work there, but I think I might have to take thermodynamics first (and I don't really feel like doing that) and I hated chemistry and never really got the symmetric/anti-symmetric orbital model (fortunately we only had to learn V.E.S.P.R).
