this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (15 children)

Gravity isn't a force tho...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yes it is. We just don't know what makes it work

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

In our current understanding of physics, it's an effect from the curvature of space and not a force. Quantizing gravity results in unphysical divergences. Whether there will be a way to model gravity as an exchange of particles, we can't know for sure. So according to our current knowledge, it's not a force.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm no scientist, but there is some debate about whether it's a fundamental force. Some think it might be like centrifugal force which isn't "real" but shows up in a certain reference frame. Gravity might actually be a result of thermodynamics and entropy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

There are many things than we experience as distinct forces but may not be actually if you change the reference (ex: centrifugal force is inertia) or if you go deeper into unification (ex: electrostatic force and magnetic force can be unified into electromagnetic force). But physics is about modeling reality in a convenient way for you current reference, we will never be certain to have the "real" final model independent from our observation bias.

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