4 ms·

I'm not a physics major. So I may have made a major booboo in explaining this. I get what you're saying. We know what inertia does. We have the math to estimat

I'm not a physics major. So I may have made a major booboo in explaining this. I get what you're saying. We know what inertia does. We have the math to estimate is effect. We can measure it's affect. To be clear, we don't know how it works. In the vacuum of space, if your body begins to spin, a force will pull your arms away from your from your body. No one on this planet can unequivocally explain why this happens. No one can explain the mechanism for how gravity works. No one can explain why when something starts spinning, there is a force that makes it continue to spin, or why there is a need for force to stop it. These are basic forces and our lack of understanding shows just how little we understand about the universe. This, after the smartest people, over 2,000 years have had a crack at it. Steve Jobs said that people who have made everything are no smarter than you or I. Einstein said something similar. I find it a bit reassuring that some of the worlds most basic forces are yet unexplained. We are still in our infancy of figuring things out. Everyone should get to work. There's a lot to do.

white-flame 9y ago
> In the vacuum of space, if your body begins to spin, a force will pull your arms away from your from your body. I think this is the easiest to explain, because it's built on the others (specifically inertia). For some point in your spinning, your arm moves in some direction. Your center of mass changes its direction of movement, because you're spinning. Your arm still goes in the direction it was initially moving, pulling itself outward as the less floppy part of the body follows the spin inward a bit better. Your arm (and all your other parts) is just "trying" to go "straight", due to inertia, and can achieve it better than your other parts, because it has an easier range of motion to do so. Inertia and gravity themselves are more fundamental, and certainly fit your descriptions (to my limited knowledge). We don't know at what level things in the universe are fundamental, instead of explainable by some additional turtle underneath. Hence we start smashing subatomic particles to see what's there. I have no clue how science even could determine if some mechanisms are the "root" ones and not just derivative of something else. There's no guarantee that the physical workings of the universe make any sort of sense.

white-flame 9y ago

> In the vacuum of space, if your body begins to spin, a force will pull your arms away from your from your body. I think this is the easiest to explain, because it's built on the others (specifically inertia). For some point in your spinning, your arm moves in some direction. Your center of mass changes its direction of movement, because you're spinning. Your arm still goes in the direction it was initially moving, pulling itself outward as the less floppy part of the body follows the spin inward a bit better. Your arm (and all your other parts) is just "trying" to go "straight", due to inertia, and can achieve it better than your other parts, because it has an easier range of motion to do so. Inertia and gravity themselves are more fundamental, and certainly fit your descriptions (to my limited knowledge). We don't know at what level things in the universe are fundamental, instead of explainable by some additional turtle underneath. Hence we start smashing subatomic particles to see what's there. I have no clue how science even could determine if some mechanisms are the "root" ones and not just derivative of something else. There's no guarantee that the physical workings of the universe make any sort of sense.