this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Science Memes

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4 fundamental forces (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Made this meme while studying CP violation in weak interactions... weak force why cant you be normal?? :cry:

Credit for the image on the right: KhezuG on DevianArt

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Shouldn’t gravity be like a tiny, vaguely dragon-shaped worm off in another field?

I mean messing with the strong force in a fistful of atoms gets you a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, my old, achy self can jump up and resist against a whole earth’s worth of gravitational force.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Au contraire, mon frere. "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space."

if you have enough mass moving quickly enough, someone's gonna have a real bad day. Gravity is fantastic for getting a lot of mass moving very quickly, it's why space missions slingshot around planets to get from A to B instead of burning propellant straight there. Even dropping tungsten rods from orbit can get you atom-bomb-sized explosions, and if you had any means of (even weakly) accelerating them before that, gravity would help further accelerate them.

That, and have you seen the amount of propellant required to overcome gravity? Compare that to the amount of fissile material you need to make a viable nuclear device. It's peanuts. A (small) nuke might as well be a rounding error compared to the amount of fuel you need to overcome gravity and leave earths orbit, gravity is that much of a fuck.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

That, and have you seen the amount of propellant required to overcome gravity? Compare that to the amount of fissile material you need to make a viable nuclear device. It's peanuts.

You inadvertently argued against your point. It takes only a few kilograms of fissile material to generate the energy needed to escape the gravitation of the 6 billion trillion kilograms gravity of earth.

But not really because you only compared chemical energy to fission.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, but we have no useful way to channel the energy from nuclear fission into propulsion, so that's a moot point if we're talking in practical terms. At least, we don't without irradiating everything. My point was not that combustion-based propellants are energy efficient, merely that it takes a lot of energy to escape gravity, and while theoretically nuclear propulsion would be more efficient, in practice, burning shit is really the best we can do without giving someone cancer every time we want to put something in orbit, because gravity is a fuck.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You can do nuclear without irradiating everything Just like a nuclear plant doesn't irradiate everything. The only reason it isn't done is safety. Rockets fail too often.

The argument that gravity is in anyway a more powerful force than weak force (fission) or strong force (fusion) is wrong. The only thing gravity has is distance. The strong force is 100 trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I was more just speaking to how it’s many orders of magnitude weaker than the other 3 forces. Though it does work on an infinite scale, so maybe it ought to be a tiny but unbelievably long vaguely dragon-shaped worm thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Upvoted for Mass Effect, my beloved.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

While that is true, for how long can you resist gravity? Gravity is the endurance hunter of the fundamental forces. Sure, you can lift your arm and resist the entire earth's gravity. But for how long, before you succumb to gravity's irresistible pull?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

resisting gravity is super easy, as evidenced by the fact that most things aren't black holes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You didn't really overcome it though. After 2 seconds you got pulled right back.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yup. But try pulling a proton out of an atom for 2 seconds.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

idk, man. that gravitational sigularity over there would like to have a word with you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Close up off monstrous, horrifying, dangerous gravity dragon... pull back and back and back, and realize it was 1000x magnified. It's magnificent roar a barely audible squeak.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

And then you look away from it for a couple billion years and it combined with with all of its friends into the devourer of worlds

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Gravity should be the derpy looking one.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, definitely. Don't know why the literal weakest force in the universe is depicted as some mega dragon.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

maybe it is because being so weak, it allows things to be come together, and eventually be strong enough, by power of family.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then it should be Vin Diesel...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Gravity bends the geometry of spacetime itself, it's pretty eldritch to me.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

Are you kidding? The strong force depends on colours and increases with the distance, how is it not the derpy one?

The weak interaction is just electromagnetism if the photons had mass (and broke CP and flavour simmetry, yeah).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Look man, the more I hear this argument the more I want to get into a Ph D program to figure out a better way to describe how fucking weird the Strong force is.

Sure, it "increases with distance" but the amount of energy you put in separating two particles bound by the strong force increases the probability of creating a new particle from the vacuum and then that distance snaps instantly. It has a practical limit if it is within the bounds of spacetime.

Edit: sorry I hit save before I finished

So not only is it special strong, if we define it with the only known things we can define anything with, it breaks all sorts of other things. And since the entire universe isn't bound together into one tight strongly held particle possibly means that the only reason the universe exists at all is because defining the strong force forced particles out of nothing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Please do! Us physics enthusiasts laymen need ANSWERS ! :D

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Color is just a word for a quantum property, not actual color.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For some further mind fuckery on the subject, I highly recommend this video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkH1citHtgs. Dude never misses in interesting content.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The weak force is super cool actually