Let’s say that it’s scientifically proven that ghosts exist. Would they then stop being supernatural and become natural, thus making it impossible to ever have proof of the supernatural?

  • Risus_Nex@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It seems I am out of the loop about gravity. How is it “unexplained”? Seems pretty straight forward (or “downward”) to me.

    • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      We know two masses attract each other across space, and have characterized a model that accurately predicts the magnitude of the force of the attraction over distance and time. What we don’t know is exactly why those two bodies are attracted, and how the force actually operates.

      For other fundamental forces, the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces and light, we have a reasonably good handle for how they operate in the quantum and relativistic physical frameworks, and we can reconcile their behavior between the two systems. We can’t say the same for gravitational force, and it’s causing problems for our understanding of how the Universe came to be, and how it is evolving. We have only recently in the last 20 years successfully detected gravitational waves with LIGO, and are currently searching for proof of a cosmic background gravitational field. We have but yet identified a quantum particle responsible for “transmitting” gravitational waves. Likewise, we cannot reconcile our observations of Universal expansion with the amount of mass we can account for across the cosmos-- that whole thing about dark matter that interacts with other masses gravitationally, but seemingly not with the other fundamental forces.

      I probably butchered that explanation badly and made some actual physicists scream with the frustration (and if so, i apologize. please weigh in and educate us!), but my point is yes, we know a lot about gravity but we just don’t know why or how gravity works.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        My understanding as to why entities are attracted by gravity is that the spacetime gets curved around them. Curved in such a way that a path “straight forward” in time gets curved so that it’s actually “toward the other one”.

        Now why the spacetime gets curved is anyone’s guess. But the fact it’s attractive has to do with bending the road underneath the car. A car with its wheels pointed straight can be turned if you curve the road in the right way. It would look like the car is “steering without steering”.