3 ms·
> That's because the repulsion is going in all directions and nets out against itself but all the gravity points inwards cumulatively. Is that true? All of the
by kaashif 2y ago
> That's because the repulsion is going in all directions and nets out against itself but all the gravity points inwards cumulatively.
Is that true? All of the protons repel all other protons with the electric force and attract with the gravitational force, and it seems like gravity is just much weaker at all distances...
I haven't thought about this very hard though.
- vikingerik 2y agoThink of three protons in a line, A-B-C. Proton B is repelled in both directions so experiences no net force. Now think of 10^50 protons in a line. They're all experiencing net gravity towards the middle.
- kaashif 2y agoOkay, but A and B are both repelled outward and it explodes. So the conclusion is any proton star would just explode? That's what I already thought.
- wakamoleguy 2y agoA is repelled outward, B is not repelled, C is repelled outward. With gravity, A is attracted inward, B is not attracted, C is attracted inward.
- mrb 2y agoYour idea doesn't generalize. With A-B-C-D-E, only C experiences no net forces along the horizontal axis, while all the others (A, B, D, E) are repelled outward. Therefore the electromagnetic force is not cancelled as you seem to imply. Of course, in practice, we don't know what the inside of a black hole is like, as quantum gravity is very much unsolved.
- smaudet 2y agoWe like to say gravity is "weak", however it seems to operate on many orders of magnitude larger distances. Even if you make the argument that the energy complicit in the strong/weak forces is cumutavily much greater than the energy due to gravity, I'm still not sure "weak" is the right word for the job... Gravity onstensibly runs at infinite speed over infinite area (the effect of gravity waves non-withstanding).