How is information inferred from mathematical formulas?
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I’ll use an example.
With Newton’s law’s we can predict the mass and acceleration of objects and tie it back to force. F = ma.
Simple right. Basically if you want something to move faster, you apply a force. That is information inferred from that formula.
Newton also derived the formula for objects falling. F=mg where g is the gravitational constant for earth. On earth this works because the Earth is so big that any other mass value falls off.
Now gravity is not unique to Earth so there’s a more generic formula **F = G m1xm2/r^2**. This formula accounts for the fact that ALL objects with mass have gravitational pull. If you jump up, the earth is attracted to you as well.
This formula tells us that if know the mass of two objects, we can compute the F of gravity between them.
Ok why am I bringing this up? Well you see, with that last equation, we can model how planets move and orbit. It’s super useful. However there are situations where this model seemingly breaks.
People observed that in certain situations there needed to be way more mass than what we could see in order for certain clusters of stuff (stars planets…) to stay together based on the gravitational forces required.
That would mean that if that equation were to hold true, you need have a lot more mass. Like 80% of all mass that is not observable. This is called dark matter.
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