4 ms·

Since gravity is about 38 orders of magnitude smaller than electromagnetic effects then there could be an electromagnetic basis here. Something to do appropriat

Since gravity is about 38 orders of magnitude smaller than electromagnetic effects then there could be an electromagnetic basis here. Something to do appropriate research into. When I did my undergraduate engineering in the late 70's, a class discussion took place on how many coulombs of charge would be required to launch a rocket into orbit. The engineering problem is to be able to input amps into a charge receptacle without it leaking away. But it was only coulombs of charge. 1 amp being equal to 1 coulomb passing by in 1 second. The other fun discussion we had was about the effects of 1 watt of sound energy and what it would do to the matter around it - a good way to bring down a building. One of the assumptions with regards galactic level gravity is that we are dealing with effectively electrically neutral material. If for any reason, it is not electrically neutral then gravity can easily be swamped by other forces. You can do a simple trick with your children and grandchildren by rubbing a balloon on your head hair (if you are blessed to have enough hair to start with) and having the balloon hang on the side of your head. This is simple electrostatic effect which overcomes the effect of gravity of the entire planet. My grandchildren love it when I do this and then do the same for them. They think it is a fun game. Another example of swamping gravity is maglev effects.

saagarjha 8y ago
The general issue with this is that neutrality is favored thermodynamically, since on average objects should tend towards being neutral. Meanwhile gravity seems to provide an easy way to explain how even a relatively chaotic system may end up becoming clumped and ordered.
- strainer 8y ago
  Electromagnetism confounds that expected tendency. In combination with the nature of charged particles to repel each other - they divert each other in an unsymmetric, chiral direction to their relative motion. This leads to the obvious magnetic fields and visible flows such as aurora, besides who knows what other discovered and undiscovered phenomena. Quantum physics uses "virtual photons" - an unfamiliar virtual light, to produce the familiar magnetic forces in motors and things. I've tentatively tried to grok electrodynamics over time but I find it even more perplexing than General Relativity.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    You're really not providing much insight other than "electromagnetism is weird and that means it must cause black holes instead of gravity, because I find it to be more confusing than general relativity". The way you're talking about the topic in general makes me think that you are trying to make it sound more complicated than it really is, to the point of stating misleading things that are almost to the point of being factually incorrect.
    - strainer 8y ago
      "almost ... factually incorrect" ?
Cogito 8y ago
The issue with electric forces is not getting the right amount of force together in one place, it's separating the positive and negative forces from each other. They don't like being separated, and so it's difficult to isolate them and then put them to work. Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. A really good breakdown of some of this is in the xkcd what if series https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
- oldandtired 8y ago
  If it was so difficult to separate, we would not the massive lightning storms that we see around the world. > Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. This is the assumption made. We can't actually check this at stellar, interstellar and galactic levels. We use proxies to determine this. Look at the solar wind, how much matter is being blasted away against the force of gravity? It's just a question and may give more insight into the complexity that our simplifying assumptions are not taking into account. > Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. 37 to 38 orders of magnitude weak.
  - Cogito 8y ago
    >> Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. > This is the assumption made. It’s not an assumption. It’s measured and modeled, and if it didn’t hold in general then so many things we see around us would simply not work. Nothing we have seen behaves in a way that would look like a significant electric force imbalance. On a galactic scale, electric storms are nothing. They’re a blip. Everything we see interacts as if gravity is the only thing that matters. To say we should consider this to not be the case requires strong evidence.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
> The engineering problem is to be able to input amps into a charge receptacle without it leaking away. But it was only coulombs of charge. 1 amp being equal to 1 coulomb passing by in 1 second. The problem with stating it in this way is that it sounds trivial - you run 1 amp devices all the time. But the power required is still many megawatts: as you try to feed charges into an oppositely polarized receptacle that is physically distant from the source, the required voltage climbs to levels usually associated with lightning. Good luck pushing an easy 1 amp against a gigavolt of potential...
- oldandtired 8y ago
  It's the engineering problem that needs solving. However, that is not why I brought it up. It was simply an example of something that could massively overcome any gravitation effect with a small quantity of charge. The question to ask is, are there any reasonable situations that could arise in which gravity has no influence over the phenomena because its effects are completely swamped? Mayeb there are and maybe there aren't. Still something to investigate.

saagarjha 8y ago

The general issue with this is that neutrality is favored thermodynamically, since on average objects should tend towards being neutral. Meanwhile gravity seems to provide an easy way to explain how even a relatively chaotic system may end up becoming clumped and ordered.

strainer 8y ago
Electromagnetism confounds that expected tendency. In combination with the nature of charged particles to repel each other - they divert each other in an unsymmetric, chiral direction to their relative motion. This leads to the obvious magnetic fields and visible flows such as aurora, besides who knows what other discovered and undiscovered phenomena. Quantum physics uses "virtual photons" - an unfamiliar virtual light, to produce the familiar magnetic forces in motors and things. I've tentatively tried to grok electrodynamics over time but I find it even more perplexing than General Relativity.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  You're really not providing much insight other than "electromagnetism is weird and that means it must cause black holes instead of gravity, because I find it to be more confusing than general relativity". The way you're talking about the topic in general makes me think that you are trying to make it sound more complicated than it really is, to the point of stating misleading things that are almost to the point of being factually incorrect.
  - strainer 8y ago
    "almost ... factually incorrect" ?

Cogito 8y ago

The issue with electric forces is not getting the right amount of force together in one place, it's separating the positive and negative forces from each other. They don't like being separated, and so it's difficult to isolate them and then put them to work. Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. A really good breakdown of some of this is in the xkcd what if series https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/

oldandtired 8y ago
If it was so difficult to separate, we would not the massive lightning storms that we see around the world. > Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. This is the assumption made. We can't actually check this at stellar, interstellar and galactic levels. We use proxies to determine this. Look at the solar wind, how much matter is being blasted away against the force of gravity? It's just a question and may give more insight into the complexity that our simplifying assumptions are not taking into account. > Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. 37 to 38 orders of magnitude weak.
- Cogito 8y ago
  >> Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. > This is the assumption made. It’s not an assumption. It’s measured and modeled, and if it didn’t hold in general then so many things we see around us would simply not work. Nothing we have seen behaves in a way that would look like a significant electric force imbalance. On a galactic scale, electric storms are nothing. They’re a blip. Everything we see interacts as if gravity is the only thing that matters. To say we should consider this to not be the case requires strong evidence.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

> The engineering problem is to be able to input amps into a charge receptacle without it leaking away. But it was only coulombs of charge. 1 amp being equal to 1 coulomb passing by in 1 second. The problem with stating it in this way is that it sounds trivial - you run 1 amp devices all the time. But the power required is still many megawatts: as you try to feed charges into an oppositely polarized receptacle that is physically distant from the source, the required voltage climbs to levels usually associated with lightning. Good luck pushing an easy 1 amp against a gigavolt of potential...

oldandtired 8y ago
It's the engineering problem that needs solving. However, that is not why I brought it up. It was simply an example of something that could massively overcome any gravitation effect with a small quantity of charge. The question to ask is, are there any reasonable situations that could arise in which gravity has no influence over the phenomena because its effects are completely swamped? Mayeb there are and maybe there aren't. Still something to investigate.