A lot of people talk about straightness and flatness as mathematical concepts. But I think OP means it in a technical sense, as in flat like your phone screen or straight as the edges of the screen but in nature. In this sense, flatness or straightness is defined as a finite number of measured points on a surface of which the coordinates all lie between 2 mathematicaly flat/straight parallel tolerance planes/lines. By that definition, depending on what a person would consider flat, say 0.002 mm between the planes/lines, there are definetly naturally occurring crystals that would pass that test.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Depending on scale. Is the surface of the lake flat?
Once you experience true level you will never go back.
True level must be like true symbols (like, in the idea that there are true names and words. Like a divine language).
If you have a true level or symbol then you have something, just as good as reality, but manipulable like language. The best of both worlds.
And even better, you need never leave the confines of the inside of your mind ever again. You can live, within your construct of perfect god-language, and interact with the world from there. Safe and powerful.
Man… are you good? You sound like a guy who showed up at my house and started saying that the pyramids and stars would aline and tell us the meaning of the universe. Also that açaí berries were the ultimate nutrition. Hope you’re doing okay there.
"Are you good". "Hope you’re doing okay there.". And the rest.
It's the modern equivalent of throwing feces.
You know who does that? Filthy monkeys.
Don't be like a filthy monkey.
Most people enjoy having feces thrown at them from what I’ve gathered.
Monkey see monkey do
I think we've got enough evidence (proof?) that the universe is flat, and straight lines will continue straight forever and never intersect.
Whether there's an actual thing that exists that does this? Dunno. Two parallel particles I guess?
Wut? Spacetime is anything but flat.
I am pretty sure we have no such evidence of the sort. Last i checked the universe being torus/donut shaped was still in the cards.
Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
"As of 2023 current observational evidence suggests that the observable universe is spatially flat with an unknown global structure."
I don't fully understand this stuff, so I dunno.
This is above it “ Current observational evidence (WMAP, BOOMERanG, and Planck for example) imply that the observable universe is flat to within a 0.4% margin of error of the curvature density parameter with an unknown global topology.[1][2] It is currently unknown if the universe is simply connected like euclidean space or multiply connected like a torus. To date, no compelling evidence has been found suggesting the universe has a non-trivial (i.e.; not simply connected) topology, though it has not been ruled out by astronomical observations.”
I am not going to say i fully understand this stuff but i regularly read into this fascinating stuff.
The observable universe may from our perspective and all our use cases be completely flat but thats not the same as fully proven and non curving geometric flat.
Torus shape, weird as is sounds like is still in the cards.
Sorry. Straight parallel like never intersect
Right, my bad.
Short answer, depends on perspective. For example surface of perfectly still lake could be considered flat, but on macro level it follows curvature of the earth. But we still use water to level our buildings, because radius of a planet is so big. On microscopic level it's anything but flat.
Someone else mentioned spider silk danging. It's also another great example, but the same perspective clause applies. But usually crystals and some geological features tend to have flat features.
maybe somebody else pointed this out:
Light ALWAYS travels in its idea of a straight-line.
Always.
It doesn't matter whether it is bent by gravity or refraction, from its perspective, it kept going straight.
Only an "outside viewer" sees any non-straight-line-ness being done, but the outside-viewer isn't seeing the curved-space or the curved-refractive-index that the photon saw.
Well, kinda, but the trajectory of the photon is contracted into a single point from its POV. Whatever destination is has, it's already there as far as it's concerned. It doesn't experience time given that it's moving at the speed of light.
A frozen lake.
A spider's thread when it's climbing downwards.
Aaaaactchhhually a frozen lake would follow the local curvature of the earth, even assuming ideal conditions and crystal formation and so on
Still it took >12h before someone started to discuss that :)
I'll going to call you on that one. Surely gravity defines the surface of the lake, not local curvature.
Yeah, that's fair. Still curved though. In my defense I had it right in my brain, the idea got garbled on its way to the keyboard
You really have to declare to what degree you are asking. You could take a very carefully grown crystal and define a plane based on its lattice structure. But the atoms are not all perfectly placed on the lattice once you zoom in far enough. There's even gaps between the atoms! A "plane" of carbon looks more like a net to an observer on the scale of those atoms.
Is an electron a perfect sphere? Scientists probably thought so in 1900 but now ask a physicist and they will say "No, probably not".
And yes, as others have stated, our space time is not perfectly Euclidean so that's another level of uncertainty. How do you measure the small imperfections in a Euclidean model when actual space time isn't Euclidean?
As a professor used to tell my class, there are no 0s.
Simple answer: no
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