Apollo Hoax WTF
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I noticed that the description of this forum says, "Because more things make us ask WTF than just code"
I've got one! Like many computer geeks, I'm also a
science/astronomy/spaceflight geek. One of the forums I frequent
allows people to argue that the Apollo landings were faked.
Normally, people just have simple misunderstandings that are easy to
clear up. They saw something on TV or on another website and it
confused them. But recently, I guy came along that is just so far
off-base, he must have some kind of head injury.
I collected some of the highlights from his posts and put them here:
http://seaofcrisis.com/ext/babb/moonman.htm
My favorite is this one:
Earth's diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes.
Because, you know, the mass of the body being orbited has [i]nothing[/i] to do with orbital velocity ;-)
Outer space is a vacuum. Earth is not. The vacuum begins just beyond our atmosphere. What is our atmosphere made of that prevents the vacuum from penetrating it..?
What can you say to that besides, WTF??
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1OLl0rZ!!!
Been months since i've laughed out loud like this!
Seriously, i think it's maybe just some guy having some fun :)
Which forum was it?
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There are actually links to the forums on the page. The first one was the badastronomy.com forum. He was banned from there. The second forum was apollohoax.net. He hasn't posted in a few days. I think maybe he went looking for greener pastures.
It's kind of sad how poorly educated he was. My nephew is five years old. I asked him what the temperature in space was and he said it was cold (a common mistake). I then talked to him for about two minutes about exactly what temperature was, and that there was nothing in space to have a temperature, and I again asked him what the temperature was. He said he didn't know (he had never heard the word "undefined" before). I said, "there is no temp because there's nothing there." He understood perfectly. So, my five year old nephew is smarter than MoonMan<o:p></o:p>
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I just read these. They're awesome.
"How high above the surface of the moon does this alleged vacuum start..?
Is there a sonic boom when they allegedly entered the vacuum..? If not, why wasn't there..?"
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@tofu said:
I said, "there is no temp because there's nothing there." <o:p></o:p>
You could also measure tempurature as the level of electromagnetic radiation, however. It wouldn't have a meaningful relationship to measurements of molecular activity and density, but it'd give you something to make comparisons and predictions with.
(Of course, with all the dust, derbis, and stray particles in the solar system, at least our neighborhood has a measurable (if exceedingly weak) tempurature.)
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@foxyshadis said:
@tofu said:
I said, "there is no temp because there's nothing there." <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p>
You could also measure tempurature as the level of electromagnetic radiation, however. It wouldn't have a meaningful relationship to measurements of molecular activity and density, but it'd give you something to make comparisons and predictions with.
(Of course, with all the dust, derbis, and stray particles in the solar system, at least our neighborhood has a measurable (if exceedingly weak) tempurature.)
Wouldn't the solar radiation induce heat in anything it heat? Anyhoo...
This guy is awesome, reminds me of the paranoid "ZOMG AMERIKKKA IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!" forum members I argue with.
Seriously, Apollo hoax theorists are nearly as big as idiots as Young Earthers.
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The moon is a hoax.
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@dhromed said:
The moon is a hoax.
Your mom is a hoax. So's your face.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Seriously, this is funny stuff. It's
incredible how often people will proclaim themselves experts in fields
they know nothing about.
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@Cyresse said:
Wouldn't the solar radiation induce heat in anything it heat? Anyhoo...
Yes. If there is something there, like a spaceship, then you can measure the temperature of the spaceship, or the temperature of a part of the spaceship. But space itself doesn't have a temperature. When people ask, "is it cold in space" they are thinking in Earth terms where it makes sense to say, "it's cold today." The reason it makes sense to say that on Earth is that we have an atmosphere, and when we say, "it's cold" we are usually talking about the air.
<o:p> </o:p>
If there's no spaceship or whatever, then there's nothing to measure and it doesn't really make any sense to talk about the "temperature of space."
Furthermore, even when you have a thing to measure the temperature of, its temperature will depend entirely on the amount of radiation it's receiving (how close it is to the sun) and how much radiation it absorbs versus how much heat energy it radiates away. Every object, every spaceship will reach some equilibrium temperature, and every object will have a different temperature.<o:p> </o:p>
You may recall that the movie Apollo 13 depicted how cold it got when they turned off the heaters. Why did it get cold, when we've all heard that it's +250 degrees F on the Moon? The spacecraft was closer to the sun at that time than the Moon was, so why didn't the spaceship heat up to 250 degrees? The reason it got cold was that the Apollo spacecraft was specifically designed to not absorb heat from the sun, but rather to reflect a lot of it away. And that was a good idea so long as they had power, because heaters are cheap and easy to build.
<o:p> </o:p>
As a counter example, consider the case of Skylab. Skylab was damaged on launch and lost some of the covering that was designed to reflect solar rays. Without that covering, skylab go very very hot.
<o:p> </o:p>
So, under the same circumstances, one spaceship gets very cold, another gets very hot. Is space hot or is space cold? The answer is, it's neither hot nor cold.
<o:p> </o:p>
Why does it get up to 250 degrees on the Moon? Because moon rocks are absorbing energy faster than they can radiate it away. Why didn't the astronauts get that hot? Because their spacesuits were specifically designed to radiate energy, and painted white so as not to absorb it in the first place.<o:p></o:p>
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Bah. The biggest hoax is gravity. It's completely fabricated. The truth is that the earth just sucks.
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@tofu said:
Earth's diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes.
Because, you know, the mass of the body being orbited has [i]nothing[/i] to do with orbital velocity ;-)Gee, you mean he doesn't grasp the fundamentals of orbital dynamics? [:)]
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@brazzy said:
Bah. The biggest hoax is gravity. It's completely fabricated. The truth is that the earth just sucks.
All matter sucks. The big stuff a little more that the rest.
But it's nothing compared to magnetism or the nuclear forces. Now THOSE suck hard.
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@tofu said:
There are actually links to the forums on the page.
The first one was the badastronomy.com forum. He was banned from
there. The second forum was apollohoax.net. He hasn't posted in a
few days. I think maybe he went looking for greener pastures.
It's kind of sad how poorly educated he was. My nephew is five years old. I asked him what the temperature in space was
and he said it was cold (a common mistake). I then talked to him for about two minutes
about exactly what temperature was, and that there was nothing in space to have
a temperature, and I again asked him what the temperature was. He said he didn't know (he had never heard
the word "undefined" before).
I said, "there is no temp because there's nothing there." He understood perfectly. So, my five year old nephew is smarter than
MoonMan<o:p></o:p>
My uncle is older than me. He asked me what the temperature in space
was, and I told him it was cold. He then talked to me forever about
temperature, and repeated his question (he had never heard of the
cosmic microwave background radiation), and said "there is no
temperature because there is nothing there" (a common mistake). I just
nodded politely. At least my uncle is smarter than MoonMan.
Yours,
tofu's nephew
The temperature of space is about 2.7K.
P.S. I'm sorry to make fun of you, tofu, but I am trying to be funny. I hope you are not offended.
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G's mean zippo. G's apply to doing turns in a plane.<o:p></o:p>
W-T-F? That page is hysterical, thanks for posting that
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@dhromed said:
The moon is a hoax.
Well, from what I've read on this page, that must be the conclusion the guy is getting to. When he's saying the orbit should be 25 minutes and it's not, does that mean some guy is beaming an image of the moon up at the night sky to fool us all? I mean, most "fake moon landing" nuts are content to say the landing was a hoax. This guy says the moon is a hoax!
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@R.Flowers said:
(snip)
When he's saying the orbit should be 25 minutes and it's not, does that mean some guy is beaming an image of the moon up at the night sky to fool us all? I mean, most "fake moon landing" nuts are content to say the landing was a hoax. This guy says the moon is a hoax!
Oops, sorry, I totally misread the quote!
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@R.Flowers said:
@dhromed said:
The moon is a hoax.
Well, from what I've read on this page, that must be the conclusion the guy is getting to. When he's saying the orbit should be 25 minutes and it's not, does that mean some guy is beaming an image of the moon up at the night sky to fool us all? I mean, most "fake moon landing" nuts are content to say the landing was a hoax. This guy says the moon is a hoax!
You're a hoax.
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My Thoughts on Outer Space
These are my thoughts on Outer Space. I think most of it is factual because it is what I remember from various Discovery Channel shows over the years. I can sum it all up here for you.<o:p></o:p>
1) The Earth is warm because it has clouds. The clouds absorb outer space radiation and lock it in. This keeps the Earth toasty. If there were no clouds, the Earth would be as cold as space.<o:p></o:p>
2) Outer space is not as cold as people think. People think if you exposed your arm in outer space it would freeze and break off because it is so frigid. This may be the case farther out in the solar system, but not near the Earth. It would be slightly cold, but you wouldn’t really freeze over, since we are closer to the sun than say, Pluto.<o:p></o:p>
3) A person will not explode if they took off their space helmet. This is a common misconception. People believe that out space is this big vacuum and a person’s lungs trying to breathe in the vacuum (no air) would cause them to explode. This is not true. They would suffocate for sure, but it would not be as dramatic as in the movies.<o:p></o:p>
4) You can hear explosions in space. This is true. It depends on how close you are to the exploding object. Since there is no air in space the soundwaves cannot travel very far. If you were closer to the explosion you would hear it in all its glory.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>I hope I helped to clarify some of the long-standing myths about outer space. Once again, this is knowledge gained from watching bits and pieces of Discovery Channel shows over the years.<o:p></o:p>
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@CPound said:
These are
my thoughts on Outer Space. I think most of it is factual because it is what I
remember from various Discovery Channel shows over the years. I can sum it all
up here for you.<o:p></o:p>1) The Earth is warm because it has clouds. The clouds absorb outer space radiation and lock it in. This keeps the Earth toasty. If there were no clouds, the Earth would be as cold as space.<o:p></o:p>
2) Outer space is not as cold as people think. People think if you exposed your arm in outer space it would freeze and break off because it is so frigid. This may be the case farther out in the solar system, but not near the Earth. It would be slightly cold, but you wouldn’t really freeze over, since we are closer to the sun than say, Pluto.<o:p></o:p>
3) A person will not explode if they took off their space helmet. This is a common misconception. People believe that out space is this big vacuum and a person’s lungs trying to breathe in the vacuum (no air) would cause them to explode. This is not true. They would suffocate for sure, but it would not be as dramatic as in the movies.<o:p></o:p>
4) You can hear explosions in space. This is true. It depends on how close you are to the exploding object. Since there is no air in space the soundwaves cannot travel very far. If you were closer to the explosion you would hear it in all its glory.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>I hope I helped to clarify some of the long-standing myths about outer space. Once again, this is knowledge gained from watching bits and pieces of Discovery Channel shows over the years.<o:p></o:p>
Are you being sarcastic?
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@dhromed said:
@CPound said:
These are
my thoughts on Outer Space. I think most of it is factual because it is what I
remember from various Discovery Channel shows over the years. I can sum it all
up here for you.<o:p></o:p>1) The Earth is warm because it has clouds. The clouds absorb outer space radiation and lock it in. This keeps the Earth toasty. If there were no clouds, the Earth would be as cold as space.<o:p></o:p>
2) Outer space is not as cold as people think. People think if you exposed your arm in outer space it would freeze and break off because it is so frigid. This may be the case farther out in the solar system, but not near the Earth. It would be slightly cold, but you wouldn’t really freeze over, since we are closer to the sun than say, Pluto.<o:p></o:p>
3) A person will not explode if they took off their space helmet. This is a common misconception. People believe that out space is this big vacuum and a person’s lungs trying to breathe in the vacuum (no air) would cause them to explode. This is not true. They would suffocate for sure, but it would not be as dramatic as in the movies.<o:p></o:p>
4) You can hear explosions in space. This is true. It depends on how close you are to the exploding object. Since there is no air in space the soundwaves cannot travel very far. If you were closer to the explosion you would hear it in all its glory.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>I hope I helped to clarify some of the long-standing myths about outer space. Once again, this is knowledge gained from watching bits and pieces of Discovery Channel shows over the years.<o:p></o:p>
Are you being sarcastic?
I'm being too snappy and not reading etc. Allow me to annotate.
1. Clouds do indeed act as an effective blanket. See Venus for a prime example. Clear skies in winter equals chilly days. The sun, however, has enough power to use those same clear skies to make very hot days in summer. If it were cloudy 24/7, it would get colder because our white clouds reflect a lot of sunlight.
Without clouds, we would be a planet of great contrasts with ice growing and retreating across continents on a yearly basis. So clouds do not specifically keep things warm, but they moderate the weather.
2. Stuff doesn't immediately turn to ice in space. Your arm, for example, wouldn't frost over. I'm not sure how a loose blob of water would finally turn out if let floating in space, but heat doesn't dissipate very effectively through vacuum, so that, too, wouldn't turn to a blob of ice quickly. Gravity strain when a body is in orbit can generate enough heat to prevent frosting from happening. Take Saturn's moon Io, for example. It is unfortunate enough to be mashed and beaten by the gravity of Saturn, its moons, and the sun, and as a result it's a big sulfuric lava pit.
3. We are designed to function at a certain atmospheric pressure. Take that pressure away, and soft tissue [i]will[/i] begin to swell. You will not explode or turn into a spherical blob of human matter, but you will quickly die because your lungs start leaking blood, and your eyes won't exactly remain terribly healthy, either.
4. Sound is vibration of a medium. In space, that medium is absent. Hence, no sound. "Close enough" would mean that you're inside the explosion. Provided that you could survive the explosion, and the resultant gas volume dense enough, yes, you could hear the explosion, but it wouldn't be comparable to hearing an explosion on earth at a distance.
If you're feeling philosophical, you mights ask: if a star goes nova and you're close enough to die from it, does it make a sound? :)
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@dhromed said:
But it's nothing compared to magnetism or the nuclear forces. Now THOSE suck hard.
Obviously you're joking, but I feel the need to espouse...
Gravity is the most powerful force there is - mainly because it can only be positive (it has no negative component unlike the other 3 forces). Black-holes are the result of gravity beating the other forces and shrinking the mass below the Chandrasekhar limit. Gravity is the only force that is not affected by entropy (no matter how the matter is arranged, the gravity sum is the same - more correctly, gravity does not participate in the entropy equation). Gravity is also one of the few properties of a star that survives after the collapse to a black-hole.
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@Xarium said:
@dhromed said:
But it's nothing compared to magnetism or the nuclear forces. Now THOSE suck hard.
Obviously you're joking, but I feel the need to espouse...
Gravity is the most powerful force there is - mainly because it can
only be positive (it has no negative component unlike the other 3
forces). Black-holes are the result of gravity beating the other
forces and shrinking the mass below the Chandrasekhar limit.
Gravity is the only force that is not affected by entropy (no
matter how the matter is arranged, the gravity sum is the same - more
correctly, gravity does not participate in the entropy equation).
Gravity is also one of the few properties of a star that survives after
the collapse to a black-hole.
Uh-uh.
Gravity is the weakest force of the four forces. The only reason it
appears to be stronger is that the others only act at the sub-atomic
level, whereas gravity has a much further reach, and you need
squillions of tons of matter to do anything meaningful with it.
I'm sure I could find a better link, but this one will do for now:
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1988/illpres/four.html
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Indeed. Gravity is ridiculously weak compared to the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces, and EM.
You might think that gravity is strong, but it only exerts itself when there is a LOT of mass. Notice how your feeble arm muscles are capable of conquering the earth's gravity over and over again each time you pick something up. Notice how a tiny magnet easily steals a coin from the earth' grasp and [i]keeps it[/i].
Imagine if you had a magnet the size of the earth. Try picking up a coin from that floor. :)
String Theory tries to explain the weakness of gravity by making it a closed string, able to quickly leak away from the regular spatial dimensions.the others only act at the sub-atomic
level
EM is a macroscopic force. S and W are sub-atomic. They are the strong wives you never hear about, behind the strong men of atoms. :)
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@tofu said:
It's kind of sad how poorly educated he was. My nephew is five years old. I asked him what the temperature in space was and he said it was cold (a common mistake). I then talked to him for about two minutes about exactly what temperature was, and that there was nothing in space to have a temperature, and I again asked him what the temperature was. He said he didn't know (he had never heard the word "undefined" before). I said, "there is no temp because there's nothing there." He understood perfectly. So, my five year old nephew is smarter than MoonMan<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p>
Actually some astrophysicist at NASA and the couple of university webpages i've checked out seems to agree with your son in that space isn't a perfect vacuum and temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy. The atoms can be "spaced out" quite far but the kinetic energy is still averageable in the same way that an expanded gas still has a temperature.
This one gives the reason for a temperature of 2.7K
It seems not only is your 5yr old nephew smarter than the original poster, he's also smarter than you! No offence intended but it's better to not make equally WTF statements about undefined temperature [H]
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@Xarium said:
Gravity is the most powerful force there is - mainly because it can
only be positive (it has no negative component unlike the other 3
forces).
@Quinnum said:The only reason {gravity} appears to be stronger is that the others only act at the sub-atomic
level, whereas gravity has a much further reach
In summary; the other 3 forces are preventing the planet from imploding, but it's only gravity keeping it together.
Sure, the gravitational effect from an individual atom is tiny compared
to the other 3 forces, but that precious URL leaves out the one crucial
detail that my post had; gravity can only be positive and as such, it is the only one capable of holding the solar system together.
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That "positive only" property of gravity sometimes leads me to believe that gravity is an illusion created by the movement of matter inside a curved spacetime continuum.
But that doesn't really hold up for long.
Mostly because I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Still, gravity is weak.but that precious URL leaves out the one crucial
detail that my post had
All replies were to another crucial detail of your post that said gravity was the strongest. :)
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@dhromed said:
Still, gravity is weak.
Reminds me of an Feynman anectode where during a lecture he mentions that gravity is the weakest force. At the same time a rather large speaker falls from the ceiling almost hiting him and Feynman corrects himself with: "weak, but not negligable."nonDev
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@nonDev said:
Reminds me of an Feynman anectode where during
a lecture he mentions that gravity is the weakest force. At the same
time a rather large speaker falls from the ceiling almost hiting him
and Feynman corrects himself with: "weak, but not negligable."
Now that woulda been funny to witness!
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I'm no astrophysicist, but it appears there may be a few of you in here.
I have a somewhat serious question related to the vacuum in "outer
space". When we've got a ship out there, say the shuttle, what
good do the thrusters/engines/blow torches do to maneuver the ship in
space? I mean, really, what are they "pushing" against?
Aren't they just pushing into a vacuum?
Serious links for astro-neophytes appreciated!
- Dan
- Dan
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@dan400man said:
I'm no astrophysicist, but it appears there may be a few of you in here.
I have a somewhat serious question related to the vacuum in "outer space". When we've got a ship out there, say the shuttle, what good do the thrusters/engines/blow torches do to maneuver the ship in space? I mean, really, what are they "pushing" against? Aren't they just pushing into a vacuum?
Serious links for astro-neophytes appreciated!
- DanGood question! The answer is simple: the thrusters aren't pushing against anything. Rather, the fuel burned inside them is pushing against the thrusters themselves. The thrusters are open at one end and one end only, allowing the burning (and explosively expanding) gas within to escape freely at that end while pushing against the other end unopposed. This shoves the thrusters, along with anything attached to them, forward.
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@dan400man said:
I'm no astrophysicist, but it appears there may be a few of you in here.
I have a somewhat serious question related to the vacuum in "outer
space". When we've got a ship out there, say the shuttle, what
good do the thrusters/engines/blow torches do to maneuver the ship in
space? I mean, really, what are they "pushing" against?
Aren't they just pushing into a vacuum?
I'll try to improve upon CfP's answer: rocket (and jet) engines do not
need anything to "push against". It's all about Newton's third law of
motion, usually nowadays expressed as "each action has an equal and
opposite reaction". The explosive force of the burning fuel pushes it
out of the engine, and the engine is pushed with the same force in the
opposite direction. Momentum is conserved, so the mass of the burnt
fuel multiplied by its speed and divided by the mass of the shuttle is
the speed gained by the shuttle.
It's exactly the same thing as the recoil of a gun,
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@CfP said:
@dan400man said:
I'm no astrophysicist, but it appears there may be a few of you in here.
I have a somewhat serious question related to the vacuum in "outer space". When we've got a ship out there, say the shuttle, what good do the thrusters/engines/blow torches do to maneuver the ship in space? I mean, really, what are they "pushing" against? Aren't they just pushing into a vacuum?
Serious links for astro-neophytes appreciated!
- DanGood question! The answer is simple: the thrusters aren't pushing against anything. Rather, the fuel burned inside them is pushing against the thrusters themselves. The thrusters are open at one end and one end only, allowing the burning (and explosively expanding) gas within to escape freely at that end while pushing against the other end unopposed. This shoves the thrusters, along with anything attached to them, forward.
Of course space isn't really empty. There is a very small amount of matter there, even in deep interstellar space (and in LEO where the shuttle and most other manmade objects reside it's quite dense).
That also explains why space DOES have a temperature, albeit a rather low one, that can be measured.
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@dhromed said:
Indeed. Gravity is ridiculously weak compared to the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces, and EM.
You
might think that gravity is strong, but it only exerts itself when
there is a LOT of mass. Notice how your feeble arm muscles are capable
of conquering the earth's gravity over and over again each time you
pick something up. Notice how a tiny magnet easily steals a coin from
the earth' grasp and [i]keeps it[/i].
Imagine if you had a magnet the size of the earth. Try picking up a coin from that floor. :)
String
Theory tries to explain the weakness of gravity by making it a closed
string, able to quickly leak away from the regular spatial dimensions.the others only act at the sub-atomic
level
EM
is a macroscopic force. S and W are sub-atomic. They are the strong
wives you never hear about, behind the strong men of atoms. :)
oops, yeah I got carried away lumping the three together :)
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@Quinnum said:
oops, yeah I got carried away lumping the three together :)
'lumping'
Pun not intended, I suppose. :)
Imagine the Universe!
