this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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Gravitational force is never truly zero. If it has mass, it is pulling at you, though it may be so close to zero that you don't realize it.

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[–] radix 43 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Any given star is constantly emitting an unimaginably large, but finite, number of photons. A tiny few of them travel tens to hundreds of (Earth) years, only to end their journey in your eyeballs.

[–] NOT_RICK 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Even crazier when you consider how long that photon bounced around inside the star before escaping out into space

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Technically the photon is being absorbed and re-emitted inside the star, so it's not exactly the same photon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

A β€œphoton” is basically just the universe producing a new field in response to an existing one, repeatedly. So photons travel through space in much the same way: they are absorbed and emitted by successive regions of space, with each region being the photon’s wavelength in size.

[–] Feathercrown 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's not really the same thing, as well as being afaik straight up wrong

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can you describe exactly how it is wrong, or is it just a feeling? Are you not familiar with the structure of an electromagnetic wave?

[–] Feathercrown 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm familiar with the structure, but don't the electrical and magnetic waves smoothly translate across space? They aren't "absorbed and emitted by successive regions of space", right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you graph the electric field strength along a photon’s flight path, there are points where it is zero. Same for the magnetic field strength.

The energy of the photon is transformed continuously between electric and magnetic field potential, and if you consider either of those signals the energy is coming into and going out of that medium repeatedly.

Because each of those non-zero periods of field potential happens in a particular spot in space (those fields don’t move; they grow and fade in sequence), I’m saying that region of space has absorbed the photon.

Of course, you know, particle wave duality. So in some ways they travel smoothly as well.

[–] Feathercrown 3 points 11 months ago

Hmm, yeah makes sense

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I'm not smart enough to understand that, but I'll believe you. :D

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Screw photons, neutrinos are where the real numbers start racking up

[–] Jilanico 2 points 10 months ago

And from the photon's perspective, it all happened in an instant 🀯

[–] AbouBenAdhem 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They’re also exerting a minute amount of electrostatic attraction or repulsion.

[–] Jilanico 11 points 11 months ago
[–] kometes 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Technically correct, but the gravity from stars is dwarfed by the gravity from yo momma.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Actually tru for every value of yo mama, from xs to xxxxxxxxxl

[–] Treczoks 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So, horoscopes are true? /s

[–] Dasus 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

While you are affected by gravity, it'd have less of an effect than other things.

For instance we can scientifically show your birth date does influence your personality, as long as you don't live on the equator.

The further North/South you go, the more pronounced the effect becomes.

That is to say that from large samplings, you can see that extroverted traits are more common with babies born in Spring (in the Northern hemisphere), while introversion is more associated with being born in autumn.

That ofc doesn't mean that a person who was born in November will automatically be less extroverted than one born in March, but if you pick two random people from those groups, it's X% more likely that it is so.

Astrology is complete fucking bullshit though.

[–] Treczoks 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Astrology is complete fucking bullshit though.

I know. That's why I added the "/s" tag.

[–] Dasus 1 points 11 months ago

I was just pointing that out because me saying birth months can affect personality isn't me validating any aspect of astrology.

Just wanted to make sure no-one thinks I'm trying some feeble defense of it.

[–] nephelekonstantatou 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

While that's technically true, it's good to note that this doesn't excuse astrology, which is based on the false fact that the gravity of celestial bodies influences our decisions in everyday life. The gravity of you Karen influences my "daily life" more than these celestial bodies and especially your belief in astrology. πŸ˜„

[–] Jilanico 2 points 10 months ago

Agreed 🀝

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"What you do... is something that the whole universe is doing in the place you call 'here and now'." Alan Watts

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Alan Watts

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] flakpanzer 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Wait, I thought gravity is not a "force" but the curvature of spacetime, so at some point the curvature gotta end or be disturbed by some other source nearby, right? A star so far away is not exerting any "force" on me as I already have two massive objects Earth and Sun twisting the spacetime around me so much. I could however be getting some gravitational waves from that star but not sure how strong they'd be or if they reach me at all (again given Sun and Earth).

(NOTE: I'm an engineer not a physicist so my understanding could all be wrong)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

You're partially right. Gavity has infinite range, so a distant star does exert some force on you. And that force is present regardless of other gravitational fields like the Earth or Sun. However it's many orders of magnitude weaker than the force from the Earth and Sun so it's pretty much irrelevant.

[–] mumblerfish 3 points 11 months ago

Eh. It's not really a definite distinction. Even in GR you formulate effective potentials and the gradient on those potentials are still called forces. Then, what is a force on microscopic scale? It is the exchange of force mediators, like photons. If gravitons exists, then there is even a similar framework for defining a force on a microscopic level for electromagnetism as well as gravity. Furthermore, electromagnetism (qed) also has an interpretation as a curvature, as it is a gauge theory, just not a curvature of physical spacetime, and that does not disqualify if from being called a "force".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

With gravity wave detectors we are able to measure gravitational waves from two merging black holes distorting space-time even here on earth. The distortion is less than the width of the nucleus of an atom.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's called microgravity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

So small, you can’t see it without a microscope

[–] raynethackery 3 points 11 months ago

Well, Proxima Centauri better stop pulling on me or I'm going to smack it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And they call it the weak force. Bah!

[–] hperrin 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

A weak force, then? I know I've heard gravity described as the weakest force before... But I also got a D in physics so... πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

[–] hperrin 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It is the weakest force, but there’s also a force named the weak force. It is many orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. But it’s not as strong as the strong force.

[–] tdawg 5 points 11 months ago

We should rename gravity to weakest force

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Technically, they're weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces, but yeah, we love confusing names in physics. Like quark flavours, which include top and bottom

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

What if we kissed under the Higgs-Boson 😳 Haha j/k... unless πŸ₯ΊπŸ‘‰πŸ‘ˆ