4 ms·
I believe you're just saying the same thing I am in different terms. The fact that zero is even a 'distance' you can divide by is consequence of the fact that y
by Retra 8y ago
I believe you're just saying the same thing I am in different terms. The fact that zero is even a 'distance' you can divide by is consequence of the fact that you're deriving distance from the coordinates of the bodies. If distance was instead fundamental (and not a function of coordinates), you'd not even have a zero distance, and you'd have no inclination to attempt dividing by it. (But the math for doing that is basically to always account for every part of every body, and that's just entirely intractable.)
This is assuming mostly Newtonian physics, of course. Once you start dealing with fields and quantum mechanics, none of this makes as much sense.
- danbruc 8y agoCoordinates and distances are independent concepts. They are function from the space you are working with into the reals assigning each respectively each pair of elements a real number for each coordinate respectively one real number for the distance. You can for various reasons choose coordinates and distances in a way such that they have simple mathematical relationships but that is just an arbitrary choice. The classical law of gravity is only dependent on distances, which is a physical meaningful concept, but not on coordinates, which are not physically meaningful. In that sense distances are fundamental in a way in which coordinates are not and a distance of zero is a meaningful thing, namely two things are at the very same place.