• fujiwood@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    146
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Everyone always asks what is gravity.

    No one ever asks how is gravity.

    Poor gravity, always helping us keep our shit together but no one ever truly understands the weight on gravities shoulder.

    • e033x@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      41
      ·
      1 year ago

      Excuse me, but I don’t see why I should have sympathy with the boot on our necks keeping us all down. Just imagine the freedom we would have if we weren’t weight down by this oppression!

  • Turducken@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    100
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Perfect use of this format. “I don’t know” is the foundation of wisdom. See: reddit where too many think they know.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    67
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s not difficult. Gravity is like magnetism for things that aren’t magnetic.

          • charliespider@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            1 year ago

            Photons have no rest (invariant) mass, and gravity doesn’t directly affect photons, but does warp the spacetime that the photons travel through. That said, photons do possess energy which can also affect things gravitationally, even other photons.

              • charliespider@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                arrow-down
                4
                ·
                1 year ago

                Well you can say that about anything can’t you?

                wE dOnT kNoW wHaT rEd iS!

                We can name thousands of variations of the color red, we can measure the wavelength of the light that produces the color red, we can build machines and devices that manipulate matter at the quantum level to produce the color red, and yet… it’s still impossible to actually say what red is, and no one knows if what they perceive as red is the same as what others perceive.

                So ya we don’t “know” the ultimate true nature of gravity, and yet…

                …even babies and simple animals learn and understand that gravity exists, and we can measure gravity to astonishing levels of accuracy, and we understand gravity enough that we can launch a rocket up into space that then launches a probe that can travel millions of kilometers through space over several years and land on the surface of a comet that’s travelling tens of thousands of kilometers an hour, but ya… “we don’t know what gravity is”

                If you can spend your entire life studying the mountains of data and literature that we have amassed about a topic, then is it honest to say we know nothing about that topic?

          • bstix@feddit.dk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah… about that… I have nothing clever to say.

            Our laws of physics aren’t really suited for it, and everything seems so round-about that it looks like that time when people tried to argue for having Earth be the centre of the solar system. It’s all just patches to something that we know isn’t that simple.

          • Knusper@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            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?

            • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              My understanding of EM fields compels me to say that they are affected by gravity because the mediating particles are.

              • Knusper@feddit.de
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                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.)

                • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  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.

    • Kage520@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      Sweet just tell me how to find same polarity gravimagnetics to put under my hoverboard

    • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah but if you scratch a little bit the surface, the comparison falls quickly. Okay, magnetism has two signs. Why not gravity ? Why does it attract and not repel? Okay, magnetism is carried by photons. What carries gravity?

  • DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    53
    ·
    1 year ago

    Working in neuroscience of consciousness field I feel him deeply. Although 57k sounds amazing to a Europoor

    • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      You can basically half American salary numbers because we have to pay for a lot of stuff that Europeans usually don’t need to pay for. $57k in America is struggling if you live in a city. Anything below $40k is one car repair away from being financially ruined.

      • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        1 year ago

        American salaries are also always presented as gross income before taxes instead if net income after taxes like in Europe.

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Asafum@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            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

              • Asafum@feddit.nl
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                1 year ago

                A not insignificant amount of money goes towards administrative pay for all the middlemen involved…

                Everyone has to get their slice of the… (Checks notes) necessary medical treatment of human beings… Ughh…

          • Damage@feddit.it
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            57k gross is a bangin’ income in Italy, at that level you pay about 35-40% in taxes if you have no deductibles etc, which means net 2631€/month, about twice the average.

            You could work alone and support a stay-at-home wife

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Really? I had no idea. It turns out I make a lot more money than I thought.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      The biggest lesson from neuroscience: Most psychology is BS and the entire field is little better than pseudoscience.

      • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I think this is a very incorrect take. I don’t think neuroscience has been able to make a single claim against psychology yet, nor any real and predictable claims at all which place it above psychology in application or correctness. Psychology of course has problems, and I’m very open to discussions of issues with methods and shit. But don’t act like neuroscience has much of anything to say about it. They’re entirely tangential fields with one at the experiential level and the other at the technical/non-experience level. Common mistake of thinking you know too much from the meme

        • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          If we weren’t talking about a brain, but instead a piece of computer software, neuroscience would be digging into the source code to figure out how it works. Meanwhile psychology is like watching a bunch of YouTube videos of people demonstrating the software.

          One provides answers. The other provides guesses.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            17
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Computer touchers stop assuming everything in the universe is a computer program challenge. Difficulty level: actually trying to respect fields of academia that aren’t about computers.

            • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              It’s a metaphor, my god. You want a less technical version? Neurology is like a farmer analyzing his soil to figure out it’s pH and NPK content to determine what crops will go best. Psychology is studying decades worth of Farmers Almanacs. The point is, only one deals with hard, definitive numbers.

              I will grant that my view is a matter of opinion, but it is my firm belief that any science that can not answer it’s own questions with solid, irrefutable, numerical answers is an undeveloped science.

              You may take that as an insult, in which case 1. It’s not meant as one, and 2. Get over yourself. It’s an observation. I’m not saying these fields aren’t important and won’t eventually develop far enough to have such answers, but as they are, right now, they are filled with deficiencies.

              Because there are no hard, irrefutable, numerical answers, these fields inherently invite biased studies with conclusions searching for evidence rather than the other way around. And while this may not be the norm, it absolutely exists and can be used to justify anything. Then other studies cite that study which cites that study, and on and on. And since it can’t just be disproven with an equation, its much harder to refute and correct.

              It’s educated guesses. Maybe some day they won’t be guesses, just like we don’t guess that 1+1=2 or that oxygen and hydrogen can combine to make water; but for right now, they’re guesses. And no amount of saying that’s offensive to those who study it will change that.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                10
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                It’s a metaphor, my god.

                Nothing good is going to come after an opener like that.

                Reductionism may make you feel very smart, but eliminating everything that doesn’t fit and doubling down on the belief that your hobby/specialization knows better than entire fields that are actually dedicated to the subject is sheer hubris.

                And no amount of saying that’s offensive

                I didn’t say that. I said the arrogance is obnoxious, because it is. And conjuring up imaginary enemies that are “offended” by your le logical factual facts is a crybully move.

                Get over yourself

                You first. You’re making extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, and in the process saying that entire fields of academia are false/pointless because they’re not special Main Characters with an exclusive grasp of reality like, presumably, yourself.

                • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Nothing good is going to come after an opener like that.

                  Yea, and nothing good will come from a shitty meme attacking a choice of metaphor rather than it’s content. Which is what you did to start. What a great picture you posted, is that supposed to represent the strawman you built rather than form any actual argument other than “no you’re wrong”?

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            14
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            The only self-described neuroscientist I’ve seen that had such open and direct hostility toward psychology, and had such “everything psychologists do is bunk, trust me bro” arrogance like yourself, was Sam Harris.

            And Sam Harris is a quack and a fraud that has failed to submit even a single peer-reviewed scientific paper since his family-funded “foundation” assigned him his doctorate so he could peddle books. You’re not a Sam Harris devotee, are you?

            https://rhizzone.net/articles/sam-harris-fraud/

          • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I’d dig into you here but comrade @UlyssesT@hexbear.net managed to perfectly. You use the analogy because you believe in what the metaphor represents (that brains can be better analyzed at the level of neurons to understand what they are, while dumbass psychologists think you can get it from experiential analysis). The computers are always of course a metaphor, but you’re influenced deeply by the thought processes which arise from the simplification of human experience (or any living experience) to a mathematical basis which computers also use. There is no reason to believe this or take the analysis at that level as any more serious than experience (which we also can’t prove but I can feel something so I believe it)

      • machiabelly [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Really? What psychology has been disproven by neuroscience? Are psyc people resisting it or are they working together? Considering how much psyc has changed the world and helped people I think the idea that it’s BS is a little strange.

        • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          we don’t understand the brain very well, psych is somewhere between leeches and luminiferous aether.

          if it was more well understood then people won’t need to go to 15 fucking different therapists before finding one that helps (if you’re lucky), antidepressants would do better than batters do at baseball, you wouldn’t need to try dozens of different medications to find one that works (if you’re lucky), and they’d take effect more quickly.

          • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Capitalism doesn’t put money into social sciences so social sciences are leeches and humour theory pseudoscience. It’s unknowable, because the money just isn’t there. The free market had decided.

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              12
              ·
              1 year ago

              There is money in psychology, but it’s all put into making people act more normal. This can be good and useful for some people, many people need aderall to comfortably live, and it’s good to stabilize depression, but these being driven by profit means often the underlying problem isn’t fixed(in the cases this is possible) and society remains ableist(for issues that are endemic). Other social sciences can be kind of a crapshoot. Many anthropologists are doing very good, important, meaningful work. But not all. Archeology is a land of contrast, and sociology is good when not practiced by privileged westoids.

            • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              i mean, (some) painkillers, muscle relaxers, and lots of other drugs work pretty fucken good. we don’t have a great understanding of general anesthesia but all that stuff works most of the time in a way that is simply not the case with brain stuff…

              • LinkedinLenin [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Consciousness is complex in a way that isn’t effectively modeled by insurance-mediated healthcare and science, which overemphasizes quantitative variables in a field that’s profoundly qualitative. Not to mention the obsession with the individual, ignoring the systems that individuals exist within.

                • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  cool i just want to not feel shitty all the time and i felt like this when i had a stable financial situation and a partner so i know it’s not exclusively because of capitalism, which means the psych field needs to step up its shit, not just help build the guillotines.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah I think I’ll be subscribing to this community. Thank you for the meme.

  • superkret@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Gravity is caused by dark antimatter particles banging against stuff.
    Send my nobel prize in the mail, I’m not good at giving speeches.

    • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      No silly, gravity is caused by the fundamental fear of loneliness so pervasive and unrelenting in the universe that it causes the formation of stars and planets.

      • novibe@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        This is no joke, pretty much most mystical religion’s cosmology.

        Like Kabbalah, Advaita Vedanta, Sufism etc.

        Not the gravity part, but basically that the first thought, after being came into existence, was longing for another, to be united.

        The first existence is in itself a separation from chaos, so its nature is “will”, wanting to fill a void.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    “The nature of this elementary particle is best expressed through these thirty equations.”

    “Ok, ok, but what do those actually mean in reality?”

    “Reality?”

    • ShranTheWaterPoloFan@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Most of those equations are full of things that can make sense, and then there is a fine structure constant.

      It’s all over particles, but we don’t know what it is. It has no units. It’s just a number that is needed for physics to work.

      • DudePluto@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        [The Fine-structure Constant] quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles.

        Why the constant should have this value is not understood, but there are a number of ways to measure its value.

        Sounds like we know what it is, we just don’t know the reason for its value. (Edit: Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean)

        Wikipedia link

        • ShranTheWaterPoloFan@startrek.website
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The strangeness of the Fine Structure Constant isn’t it’s value, it’s that we don’t know what it is.

          Other constants have units that explain what they are doing. Like converting miles to meters we multiply by meters/miles. But this is just a number that is needed. That’s so strange I can’t think of another example.

    • daellat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU try to follow along with this. Also, forces have force particles, there appears to be no such thing for gravity though I think scientists are still working on this problem to this day. Mass seems to be derived from the higgs field but I am not knowledgeable enough to answer how that relates to gravity per se.

        • paholg@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Are you sure about that? My understanding is that gravitational waves are predicted by general relativity, not inconsistent with it.

          In any case, “all models are wrong, but some are useful”. Gravity as curvature is a pretty damn useful model.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            No, I’m not sure about it. And general relativity did predict gravity waves, and did generally describe gravity as being the curvature of spacetime.

            Having said that, if “gravity waves” move at the speed of light, but speed is distance over time, how can you measure a “speed” when the thing whose speed you’re measuring warps the units you use to measure it? It seems like you could talk about the movement of gravitational waves from the point of view of an observer outside the system with a ruler and a stopwatch that were unaffected by gravity. But, general relativity seems to suggest that there are no absolute / external reference frames you could use.

            I fully admit that I don’t completely get general relativity, and that it has been a very useful model. It just seems like it can be a useful model even if there are certain dusty corners where you shouldn’t spend too much time looking because things stop making sense there.

  • wjrii@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The squishy humanities version of this, in America at least, goes as follows:

    In grade school you learn that the Civil War was about slavery.

    In high school you learn that the Civil War was about a lot of complicated things.

    In college you learn that the Civil War was about slavery.

      • wjrii@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        My mom (RIP) was a boomer born and raised in Georgia. In our house, we were taught that General Sherman was in hell right alongside Napoleon and Hitler.

        If he is, it’s for his handling of the Native Americans and bison and not for how he prosecuted the March to the Sea. The Confederacy was a boil that needed popping.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          My general thought on the March is that glorifying a series of war crimes and mass civilian death is never a good thing, and it wasn’t the wannabe aristocratic slave owners that suffered the most from it.

          But war is hell, which is why you should always try to avoid starting one, especially for a contemptible cause.

          The March should be filed under the same general heading as the WW2 bombing campaign, it’s one thing to view it as a necessary evil but it’s another thing to revel in it.

      • wjrii@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        That gag is cute, and I’m aware I’m killing the joke here, but it would have been funnier if it weren’t for the fact that underpinning the “economic factors, both foreign and domestic” was just more slavery. The South was utterly dependent on it for their economic security and social identity, and it informed every decision their leaders made.

        • Turducken@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Nah, Apu’s PhD is in comp sci. The joke is his extensive education. It sucks that so many very talented and educated folks have to start a business to legally stay in the US.

          • luciferofastora
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s easy to mistake in-depth topical knowledge for general intelligence and knowledgeability, both in yourself and in others. Most topics are far more complex than a superficial examination could ever hint at.

            Hell, cognitive biases of knowing more about a given topic than you actually do are a studied phenomenon, and it would be unwise to assume anyone - including ourselves - to be immune to that. There are even several relevant XKCDs about it.

  • Dr. Coomer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      You’re fucking with me, right?

      Stars were visible that shouldn’t have been visible?

      What am I missing?

      • neryam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        Stars that were behind the sun (within the radius of the sun, geometrically speaking) were visible due to gravitational lensing

          • Classy@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              An analogy I’ve used with my children.

              Sit in the middle of our trampoline. Roll a ball in a straight line beside you. Watch it roll around you and fall into the depression you make in the trampoline surface.

              This is a primitive 2 dimensional simulation of gravity.

              The ball “thinks” the surface is a flat plane, as far it knows it’s rolling in a straight line.

              You are the heavy object curving space(time). Your eyes are a higher (3rd) dimensional observer and can see the curvature and it’s effect on the ball.

              If you roll them ball fast enough, it curves slightly and then escapes your “gravity well”. It has changed course slightly. This the gravitational lensing simulation.

          • Krauerking@lemy.lol
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah it sounds silly but like it’s a weird thing to see stars that are literally behind another object because it weighs enough and it’s a interesting story for Einstein who has a moment discovering it.

          • AssholeDestroyer@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            The James Web Space Telescope’s Instagram page posted the phenomenon recently. Gravity from nearby galaxies magnifies space near them, allowing the telescope to see incredibly far away galaxies.

          • FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you really want to be messed up, absolutely nothing is where we think it is because gravitational lensing affects the light of every object in the universe, while we observe. The further away it is, the more light is warped by the masses along the path, and we can’t know what those many masses are or where they are either.

            Our observability of the universe is a guessing game as large as the universe, and there is no conceivable model to assess it all and the interrelations between…everything.

            • theangryseal@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Now this is something that I knew absolutely nothing about, but I feel like it should have occurred to me with what I did know.

              Thank you.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      Now you can too! With our patented PhD system you will,

      1. Kill your social life!
      2. Kill your self-esteem, values, positivity and much much more.
      3. Spend the rest of your life fighting for tenure in an ever saturated field of your choice!
      4. Develop a growing sense of envy and dissatisfaction as you watch your friends in the corporate world quickly surpass you in income!

      With just 132 simple payments of $3,800 a month, all this can be yours!

      But wait, there’s more! Call now and get your very own opportunity to be a TA! Enjoy belittling undergrads and sharing your growing disillusionment with the academic system. All while you’re under pressure to complete your doctorate! Don’t miss out!

      • NotSpez@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oh and then!? Postdocs! Check acollierastro on youtube, she has a great video on postdoc exodus.