OK. So we are invoking hypothetical omnipotent, omniscient aliens to argue that certain viewpoints that you dont agree with are arrogant/naive. Got it.
Gravitational force is accounted for in these types of calculations. If you are in high school, take physics, they will teach you the answer to your question (in this case, Force = massobject*accleration due to gravity). If there was no gravity. It would take the same amount of work to move a BB as an oil tanker. Strong nuclear force doesnt do anything since you arent splitting atoms.
You have completely missed my question due to your evident lack of understanding of the subject. Copy and pasting a formula does not equate understanding. I asked about gravity and you just repeat my question saying there is some acceleration but it’s due to gravity.
Saying strong nuclear force doesn’t do anything just shows you know nothing. First learn some basics such as what quarks are. Then perhaps you might begin to just understand a fraction of my question.
My question is how forces work, if you’re just going to give me a childish reply like a definition like gluons are elementary particles that act as the exchange particles for the strong force between quarks and completely ignore my question of how these forces work or exist then please don’t even bother.
oh, my mistake. Due to the way you phrased your question I thought you were asking how both gravity and internuclear forces operate in regard to you moving an object with your hand. I didnt mean to offend you, but thanks for your insult-filled response. I suppose insults are the perfect substitute for clarity and a great way to get a meaningfu;l discussion started.
no, we are talking about aliens with control of the fundamental forces. Any advanced civilization that can travel the galaxy like we travel the country would have the knowledge and experience to control fundemental forces that we are bearly learning to understand, let alone even use.
This control make them above petty useless things like competition. You are simply proving White Shadows point even more. A civilization that’s advance will most likely not adhere to things like competition or capitalism because there would be no need for them.
In a classical sense you can easily describe as the displacement of mass over distance. F = mass * (velocity / time)
Electromagnetic theory kinda makes that definition difficult because what is electrostatic force. We often use “lines” to physically represent this “force”. And it gets more difficult once we start thinking about things like nuclear force. You can’t really describe force using the idea of mass. Because it isn’t mass that repulses two electrons over a distance X, it’s a quantized physical property of that given particle that’s acting on the other electron. What about the force that holds an atom together? Why is it that suddenly, these masses are attracted to one another over a specific distance, where the strongest range is the radii of a hydrogen atom, but the starts losing noticeable strength after bismuth, and at elements of 110 that given element only exists for fractions of milliseconds.
So what is force? it has to be something that displaces something tangible for sure over a real space in any direction or angle.
Einsteins theory of relativity where E=mc^2 says a lot. Not only does it say that energy is equal to a mass moving at the speed of light, but that mass is energy.
So I would say that the easiest way to describe a force at an intermediate level, is the tangible consequence of energy flow from one place to another. But, gravity really fucks with this too. Gravity exerts force, but not through energy, but the physical warping of “space” itself.
IIRC, When a star is dying it starts fusing elements into heavier and heavier elements, and there is net energy up up to Iron. As this happens, the star starts collapsing on itself and it overcomes the electromagnetic force and compresses atoms into a volume they wouldn’t occupy. If the mass is sufficient the nuclear force is overcome and mass literally collapses unto itself into a singularity forming a black hole.
how does this black hole and gravity in general exert a force on one another? I don’t know enough about gravity to continue, but the idea of gravitational force really complicates things as of now from my perspectie. It’s why scientists want a grand unifiying theory of FORCES. i’M SURE others who study pure science can fill you in more, as an engineer I’m not taught these things. LOL
TIL:
They are called the four fundamental forces of nature: Gravitational, Electromagnetic, Strong Nuclear, and Weak Nuclear.
Looks like we could quickly go down the rabbit hole of exponential possibilities if we reach into theoretical physics.
Even the Wiki article spirals out of control in the first couple of paragraphs, describing the history of modern theoretical physics.
The way I understand it now is that force is just a mathematical value. It doesn’t have to be a physical thing. Newton just thought, “huh, I wonder how exactly different interactions make things move”. When he looked at things moving, he just noted that the value of mass*velocity changes over time, and called that rate of change “force”. It’s just a name for an abstract thing that happens to be able to explain stuff.
It’s just a mathematical system that, when put together, explains things pretty accurately. But at the end of the day it’s just numbers floating around in our heads, not something we can actually physically see.
Same thing with energy. In higher-level physics, no one looks at force anymore. They look at energy to try to solve for motion. But energy is just a number that changes according to certain rules, and it just happens to be that we can deduce the motion of something based on that number.
So, quite literally, force is the time derivative of momentum, or mass*acceleration in most cases. That really is what it is; the formula is not just some way to mathematically describe force, the formula IS force. Newton’s 1st and 2nd laws aren’t actually laws, as the word is used in physics. They’re definitions. Force started as an abstract mathematical value, and later on people just thought of it in terms of physical phenomena like pushes and pulls, NOT the other way around.
I assume we’re talking general relativity here and its explanation of gravity. The idea behind the entire body of general relativity is simple: when an object is close to a point of space with energy, the object undergoes a change in motion. That’s all relativity really is, both special and general: a way to mathematically quantify motion and changes in motion.
The fundamental idea of GR is that an object undergoes a change in motion (which we say is “due to gravity”) under certain conditions, right? That change in motion can be quantified in different ways. The one relevant to this discussion is measuring the change in momentum. When there is change in momentum, there is force. The most basic way to put it is that if something makes something else change its motion, that thing is exerting a force. It’s just that; no invisible physical connection that tugs on stuff or anything. Gravitational force is just what we call the change in momentum in something due to its position relative to mass/energy, as rigorously described by GR.
If you want to ask “but why does an object undergo a change in motion when close to something with mass/energy?”, well, there just isn’t an answer. That’s just the way the universe works. You could read about GR all you want, you could look at the equations that tell you the exact behavior of things, but you won’t find out WHY the phenomenon happens, just HOW.
Any of you guys ever read Gamow’s “One, Two, Three … Infinity” or “Gravity” when you were young? I think some of you should give it a go because it answers some of your questions and the books are approachable because everything is explained simply.
You don’t have to call it a force due to gravity, you can call it whatever you want, but my question still stands, what is the cause of moving? Why does an apple fall down? I expect humans to reply with “gravity” and to not understand the process but it would be interesting if more people would start thinking.
The question is neither terminology nor formula. It has to be something that displaces something? What causes the displacement?
Humans are interested in finding an additional Earth-like planet since they are programmed to survive and they know subconsciously that this planet cannot sustain human life forever.
The Earth is infinitesimal in size compared to the universe and humans have limited knowledge of the universe, so to assume that “aliens” don’t exist would be foolish.
This statement is from your link:
How about this example, an ant colony somewhere in Africa in a desert that humans do not visit. Do humans exist if the ants have no “evidence” of their existence?
yo chemist4hire!
hahaaaaaaaa
you still read popular science books? Recent suggestions?
you still play streetfighter?
This being the science thread, one might be compelled to say that believing anything in lieu of evidence is foolish. This like a religion thread all up in here. hahaa
I think its just a limit of human language that any answer to “what is a force” is difficult to come up with. Math is the language of physics, not english.
Ultimately, you can’t really explain why things move or fall down. You can explain the mechanisms in terms of simpler underlying mechanisms, but you’ll eventually end up with the simplest, most fundamental mechanisms that just have no answer to WHY it happens.
For example, you can ask why an apple falls and answer with “well, it’s because all things in general fall according to the equations of freefall motion.” Then you ask why that is, and you can say “well, it’s actually a specific case of a universal law of gravitation, applied to the conditions at Earth’s surface.” Then you ask why such a law exists, and you can say “well, it’s actually a specific case of a broader system of consequences that involve spacetime and energy and their interactions, as detailed in GR.” Then you ask why such consequences exist, and you can say “well, all the consequences actually just boil down to the fact that two objects with energy cause a change in motion in each other.” Then you ask why that is, and you’re left with nothing else except “that’s just the way the universe works.”
I think this is essentially what you’re asking. Your question is not necessarily what force is, but really what makes things move and why it makes things move the way they do. That’s the way I understand you, but you can clarify, of course.
Force doesn’t actually have anything to do with that question. Force is just a way to mathematically quantify motion. It’s an attempted explanation of the phenomenon, but it’s not actually the phenomenon itself. The phenomenon is that things move, and force is just one of our ways of explaining HOW things move. If you ask WHY things move, you just won’t find an answer in physics.
Anyway, yeah you’re right; it’s this kind of question that might make for an interesting discussion. It’s something nice to ponder about. I don’t mean to end the discussion with what I’m saying, I just wanted to point out two things: force quite literally is the time derivative of momentum dp/dt, since this was how it was defined in the first place, and; the answer to WHY things move is, ultimately, not something you can find in physics.
Whats up? I still play street fighter but not as committed to it much as I used to.
I read a ton of books, recently I read Ordinary Geniusus (Link) which was about George Gamow and Max Delbruk and tells the story of how these physicists shaped the thinking of cosmology and molecular biology. I like reading and watching popular science programming but sometimes I think people get a false understanding of whats going on from watching and reading those materials. This thread reminds of all those undergrads in gen chem and orgo that memorize definitions and have a superficial understanding of the material. They can’t connect concepts. All dry lab synthesize and paper chemistry with no experience from being in the trenches.
When I mentioned gravity and strong nuclear I thought it was obvious that I was talking about the four fundamental forces: electromagnetic, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear.
So far I have not found a single human who knows how they work, including but not limited to professors at MIT and Columbia University.
