this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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I think high level degree holders know a lot more than the average man thinks we know, in fact I doubt the majority of people even know US High school level stuff like that we've discovered a gravitational constant and about the inverse square law as it applies to gravity.
The sad reason for that is that it's a conversation killer. I would love to go back and forth for hours on things like the uncanny similarity between universal gravitation and Coulomb's law. But, when I speak to someone with a similar background to mine it's all...work-work-work-how-is-it-applied??, and when I speak to someone without that background it's all yawns. It's a shame because in either case I think science is the most interesting topic. It's just as edifying to dive casually into the philosophy as it is to dive rigourously into the maths. I learn more per unit time from either type of conversation than from studying papers. And, it's a passion, but one whose expression is stymied either by explaining it in terms of football fields per dolphin or by making it marketable. Interaction with other minds is the most valuable type of learning.
I feel like I may come off as a bit of an elitist writing this, but the problem really is the opposite: I wish more people would get involved!
Edit: the responses to this have made my day you guys. This is why I left Reddit.
I’m a person without that background and I’ll talk about it. What’s the uncanny similarity you mentioned?
Well that's lovely, thank you 😊 So Newton's law of universal gravitation is:
F= G×M×m/r^2
which is simple enough to be able to say it in a sentence: "the force of gravity F on two masses M and m is proportional to their masses and square of the distance between them, r " so the heavier and closer planets/suns/black holes are, the greater the gravitationnel pull.
Coulomb's law is:
F= k×Q×q/r^2
which is pretty much exactly the same as you have probably noticed: "the force of electrical attraction F on two charged particles Q and q is proportional to their charges and the square of the distance between them, r "
So the exact same rule applies to planets and atoms. Their behaviour can be explained in the same way. It's called an "inverse square law", it's got a name because they happen everywhere. And it's just, like... Why? Why does the universe work that way? You're not really encouraged to ask that sort of question as a science student, because it "goes nowhere" and doesn't lead to actionable results. But I think it quite spooky. There are loads of weird results like that in science and maths (see quantum theory for abundant examples!) but it's unusual to be able to sit and think about it. There is, for the inverse square law, a pretty elegant mathematical explanation for why they're so common, but it doesn't quite scratch the itch for me, it just raises more questions
Edit sorry for text wall. This is probably why I shouldn't do this!
You mentioned a mathematical explanation for why it's so common. Got any further reading on that? It's mind blowing that the math for calculating planetary movement and atomic behavior is exactly the same formula, with different variables. Do you have any theories on why inverse square law is so common?
I think inverse square laws are so common because they apply to situations where the distance of one object from another (a one dimensional line) is used to calculate the force potentially felt at any point across the surface of a sphere (a TWO dimensional surface) at that distance.
But then you also have the strength of magnetic fields that follows an inverse CUBE relationship. The simple way I model this in my head is that magnetic dipole fields kind of fill a three dimensional volume with curved field lines, as opposed to gravity or electric charge where the “lines” go straight out, and at any specific distance the total strength of the omnidirectional field is spread throughout that two dimensional surface of a sphere of the same radius.
4D thinking. That's where my brain says "no more"
The Wikipedia page is a good start. In a nutshell:
There's a good visualisation of that explanation which is the banner picture on the Wikipedia page.
I don't have any better theories than the existing ones, for sure! But there is an underlying pattern that goes deeper even than that law - the principle that physical objects follow the path of least resistance links these laws and many many others.
This is actually really cool. I have no idea about any of it, but I remember watching a documentary a long time ago that said certain mathematical patterns repeat all over nature. What you said seems similar to that.
I get it...but at the same time I also get why you're not going to be the life of the party with material like that.
I think a big part of this is because it's already a super, super niche topic, but then you're adding the extra layer of wanting to stick to a largely theoretical/conceptual tone of discussion, ruling out most of what few were still interested when you started into the topic. And once you're that far down the rabbit hole, I feel like there's going to be hyper specific topics that dominate, and unless your conversation partner not only has that knowledge but also wants to have that conversation...well the conversation isn't really going to happen at all.
It's also a very brain-power intense set of topics for a leisure time get together where most people have the goal of not having to think too hard on anything.
You're absolutely right, I see that. It's why I used to eagerly lecture all of my friends about physics when I was studying it, but now I pretty much never really talk about it except on clear nights when I can name stars and talk a bit about them.
Most people are stupid boring and unthinking for the majority of their lives. It's very hard for those with special interest to find others, let alone others with the same special interest.
Fuck the fact that modern society has made most people stupid boring and unthinking, and caused die-hard intellectuals and academics to feel lonely.
Fuck it bro I'll listen. I don't have a degree or anything so I probably won't understand much though.
What's nothing like? Before the big bang, there was nothing. What the fuck colour was it? How does that even work? I think about this all the time.
You and me both. I love documentaries and when I get on a space kick, I think about this a lot. What did it look like? What's nothing? My brain can't fathom literally nothing. It had to be some sort of something. Almost makes me want to say that the universe does have a creator, but in that case, where'd the creator come from? (My favorite creation myth is that the Goddess danced and galaxies spun off on her dress. Makes as much sense as any of the others.)
I'd assume black, no? Just total, unending, absolute darkness? Space is mostly vacuum with unimaginable distances between anything, and that empty, void space is basically pockets of the nothingness that existed before the big bang, so I'd (with my limited experience) assume something similar.
Though how it works? Yeah I have no fucking clue man, it's basically incomprehensible isn't it? Just the absence of existence. If I remember right, I heard at the time that all the matter of the universe was condensed into a singular point, and the big bang was basically that exploding, but it's hard to imagine that it was the only thing that existed, and that there was nothingness beyond it.
You ever wonder if human minds just biologically aren't equipped to understand or comprehend this stuff? Same way ants can't possibly fathom the existence of radio waves or apes can't understand trigonometry or how it works?
I'm disinclined to believe that if for no other reason than I'm sure similar things have been said many times throughout human history about any number of subjects that were then much more fully explored and understood. Anatomy, biology, genetics, etc. all seemed to be fields that were "mysteries too far beyond human comprehension"...until they weren't.
Absolutely. I am completely convinced of the fact that there is knowledge that we can never possess simply because our minds aren't capable of understanding it. I mean nobody understands quantum theory. Some people can do the maths and make the right predictions etc, but they have absolutely no idea what's really going on. I think that's at the boundary of our understanding. Which means there's other stuff being the boundary, and other stuff way way beyond the boundary. But, I think that in the same way you can explain general relativity to a child in simple terms, if we produce AI that can grasp higher concepts, it could explain it to us.
Also: if there was nothing, then what went bang?
Just as important, why did it go bang?
Not to open an entirely different can of worms, but aside from the presence or lack of an actual character in the role, religious and scientific theories on the beginning of everything are similarly unfulfilling.
"First, there was nothing. Then a thing happened, and there was something!"
It's the same for the beginnings of life. We know loads about the conditions before in happened and after it happened, but nothing about that all important instant when it happened.
Fur the big bang's genesis, I like the thinking that small pockets of potential started to form, since a pair of opposed charges is sort of the same as nothing. But that does go along the lines of "nature abhors a vacuum" type of thinking, which has been comprehensively proven wrong since it was popular. Also it doesn't explain one of physics greatest mysteries: why is there so much matter and no antimatter. If things came into existence in opposing pairs, we should see equal amounts of both
I dunno, it's an inverse square. Are we going to get excited each time something has a linear relationship to another thing? What makes the inverse square so special?
In my field of work (molecular biology) anything with a linear relationship gets exciting! I got an R^2 of .9968 last week that had me jumping for joy.
Bertrand's theorem states that stable orbits are only possible for one single inverse distance relation (in classical mechanics): inverse square
If the law is not inverse square (or harmonic oscillator), there will be no long lasting orbits, no galaxy clusters, no galaxies, no star systems, no planet and moon pairs.
If the electrostatic force wasn't inverse square, electromagnetic force would look much different. No gauss law would be possible.
Inverse square relationship is really neat
There's a lot of things which are required to be exactly as we observe them to be for our surroundings to work out as we observe them to be. If they weren't we wouldn't be here to observe, or, at the very least, we'd be quite different.
Also as to other universes: Who says that any random universe with other laws ties together objects based on their mass. For all we know their attractive force could be relative to photon emissions and elves keep the orbit stable by strategically shining torches at the sky (ok that's not that likely evolutionary speaking but we're talking physics).
That's why it's interesting that inverse square is in electrostatic and gravitational forces only. Weak and strong force don't follow inverse square. And we don't see the highly complex organization inside the nucleus that we see outside it (otherwise we'd have stable orbits inside the nucleus as well)