It's not difficult. Gravity is like magnetism for things that aren't magnetic.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Also for those that are magnetic
I will assume that to be true, because it makes sense.
gravity applies to everything with mass. But also light which has no mass.
This isn't the first time, I'm hearing about light being affected by gravity, but like, are we saying that electric fields and magnetic fields are not affected by gravity... except they are, when they oscillate back and forth in the form of an electromagnetic wave?
My understanding of EM fields compels me to say that they are affected by gravity because the mediating particles are.
I'm guessing by "mediating particles", you don't mean those affected by fields, but rather those 'propagating' the field, i.e. photons.
And well, my research tells me that photons don't really exist. 🙃
Well, particles don't really exist, in the traditional sense. They're not solid balls flying through space. They're rather just peaks in the EM and gravitational fields. And then, if you've got a disturbance in a field, a peak or wave will travel along the field, which propagates that disturbance. And if you've got all that internalized, then you could call that peak/wave a "particle" again.
Here's a rough source / different explanation of those claims: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/201
But yeah, I don't think this particle analogy is helping us here. We're ultimately still just talking about a field being affected by gravity.
(Still, thanks for the input. I'm sorting my thoughts as I go, and reading that I've also been subjected to an unhelpful analogy is helping it make sense.)
I also like to say that particles don't really exist in any sense one would associate to the word. And to be pedantic, we can't even say that particles are peaks in a field because that is merely how we model it, and that model is incomplete.
Since we don't know what gravity is or does, nor what (or if) a field is or what particles are, it's hard to answer a question like whether a particular field is affected by gravity other than in terms of a specific model and hope that corresponds to real observations.
In this case, our best bet is to reason in terms of known properties of what we think of as particles mediating the field in question. Photons are subject to gravitational influence, and so we expect EM fields to be as well.
Interesting points. I was thinking, we're generally treating EM fields like they're unaffected by gravity, because we've measured the field strength around a magnet and saw that it wasn't drooping to the ground.
But I guess, the influence of gravity is so weak on EM fields, that it only becomes apparent near a black hole and therefore, it's hardly possible to actually measure a deformation on Earth. And therefore, we just don't know.
Plus, of course, other reality-bending stuff, like the EM-waves we use while measuring (e.g. visible light) being affected by the gravitational pull.
Do you know, if there's anything for which we've secured that it's unaffected by gravity?
Apparently, there's a few particles/field-peaks/whatever, which are deemed massless, but given that no mass does not mean unaffected by gravity, that's kind of moot...
I don't think we know of anything not affected by gravity. If we did, General Relativity would be considered incorrect (not merely incomplete).
Awesome. Slowly, but surely, this General Relativity thing starts to make sense to me.
You okay op?
I'm in geoscience. Physicists are nerds. Touch grass, ya dweebs. We wear hiking clothes on campus and we aren't going on fieldwork until July. It's called dedication.
"The nature of this elementary particle is best expressed through these thirty equations."
"Ok, ok, but what do those actually mean in reality?"
"Reality?"
I still want to know what it is tho
A force field generated by your mom's obesity
So you are attracted to that, huh?
that depends on his own mass and distance to her.
Working in neuroscience of consciousness field I feel him deeply. Although 57k sounds amazing to a Europoor
57k sounds nice until you realize that 1200 go to your health plan and you still need to copay hundreds every time something comes up.
American salaries are also always presented as gross income before taxes instead if net income after taxes like in Europe.
we also do gross before taxes in Germany. 57k before taxes is still a solid salary in many areas of Germany. Some MINT and Financelords might want to disagree with that, but it is in the top 15% of salaries. At that Level you pay about 5,1k taxes, 5,3k pension and 4,6k for health, 1,3k eldercare and 750 unemployment insurance. (all mandatory)
That seems quite a lot at first, but for instance unemployment pays 60% of your net income up to a year qfter loosing a job, health insurance also covers all children until they are 25 or earn more than 500€/month.
It only sounds like a lot of taxes to us Americans that don't actually do the math... I'm making almost 60kUSD so it's a very real comparison for me. Like your 4.6k healthcare tax is my 14.4k pay cut (mandatory healthcare coverage for full time employees paid for by the owner @1,200/month for me) Your 5k general tax is higher than my 3.6k income tax, but everything else offsets that by such a large margin that arguing against it is laughable.
Thing is we also pay a ton of of pocket when we go to the doctor too.
I wish we had a number to use like your 4.6k but for America so in our arguments for universal healthcare we could show just how much more we really pay...
Sorry for all the edits, I remember as I reread lol
If i remeber correctly the US could cut its healthcare costs in half by switching to an universal healthcare system, while granting healthcare to everyone.
Now do doctors of sociology
0 to alcoholism in 11 years.
What do you mean you don't have desk whiskey? EVERYONE has desk whiskey! Even the counselors!
Genuinely we can't tell what it is. We once thought it was just a normal pull due to mass until Einstein proved us wrong during a solar eclipse where we could see stars that shouldn't be visible from our current position in orbit. Then we get into how it works, WHICH THERE IS NO TELLING AS THERE ARE TO MANY GOD DAMNED VARIABLES INVOLVED.
You’re fucking with me, right?
Stars were visible that shouldn’t have been visible?
What am I missing?
Stars that were behind the sun (within the radius of the sun, geometrically speaking) were visible due to gravitational lensing
Oh ok. That messed me all up.
I’ll have to look into that.
It isn't directly analogous because one is gravitational and the other is not, but if you've ever watched a ship sail beyond the horizon, sometimes you can see a reflection of the sail after it is no longer in direct sight, because the way that light can reflect around the curvature of the earth. It's a pretty crazy phenomenon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage
In the case of the OP, as light from distant stars approach the sun, some of their light that may normally have passed to the side of the sun and beyond the earth, thus rendering them invisible, are instead 'bent' back towards the earth by the sun's gravitational well. But since the sun is so luminous we normally cannot see those stars. If the sun were somehow dark we would see a collection of tiny, distorted stars around the perimeter of it.
To metaphorize: imagine a ball rolling straight from a point directly in front of you, but at an angle such that it won't roll to you. Now imagine a dip in the ground, not deep enough to cause it to fall in and not escape, but enough to cause the ball to curve as it rolls, sending it to you instead. The sun acts in a similar manner on light.