How is it theoretically possible for gravity to have infinite range throughout the universe?
In: Physics
You know those science fiction movies where some alien says “your feeble human mind couldn’t possibly understand…”, well it turns out there are some things that our feeble human brains have a very, very, very, hard time understanding and this is one of them. It’s easy for us to understand particles and if I tell you that a star throws out a handful of photons into space you can understand how those will just go on and on and on.
If I tell you that a force exists that drops exponentially from its source its easy for you to imagine what’s happening near the source. But the idea that the force could drop off and approach zero but never actually reach it? Witch-craft!
Its a bit like a toddler trying to shove a square peg into a round hole again and again and again. To them it should work and its baffling that it doesn’t. That’s basically what you are doing when you try and apply your regular, intuitive, thinking to issues like this. I don’t mean this to be derogatory, quite the opposite. We should think of ourselves like toddlers when it comes to this kind of stuff and appreciate the WONDER AND MYSTERY of the universe we are discovering. Its ok to keep banking the square peg into the round hole because that’s how we learn, so long as you are actually trying to learn from the process.
For myself, I’m just happy and excited that we live in an age where there are still grand mysteries left to be solved.
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