this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] NielsBohron 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I will not stand for this Planck erasure! Sure, Einstein and Maxwell are great, but how can you leave off the father of quantum mechanics when a third of the poster is a direct result of his research?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

As a non-sciencey person, can someone explain the chasm of ignorance?

[–] FiveTimbers 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Most of the "chasm of ignorance" is the stuff we know that we don't know. We don't know what dark matter is made of. We don't know what dark energy is. We don't know how to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We don't even know if there IS Dark Matter

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

I am not a scientist, but I do like to watch them on youtube: We're pretty sure something we don't know about has a ton of mass. Otherwise a bunch of other stuff doesn't really make sense, for example the universe should be way way bigger than it is now without something unseen keeping it condensed. So the existence of "dark matter" is about as confirmed as it can be without observing it directly. What we don't know is what dark matter is, how to observe it, or how it works. But math, as we currently understand it, implies its existence pretty heavily.

Which does in fact mean that our math or understanding could just be wrong. Technically you're right, we DON'T know if there really is dark matter. But if we assume our current knowledge is correct we can make a pretty reasonable guess about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I personally lean towards "we've done all this work and it's incredibly scary that modern observations actually tell us all the work we've put in is actually wrong and we have to create brand new formulas again."

[–] HootinNHollerin 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Isn’t it the stuff we don’t know that we don’t know?

[–] ieatpwns 15 points 1 month ago

I’m not a physicist, but im pretty sure it’s just the gaps in our knowledge like exactly how/why gravity works. And like we don’t know the things we don’t know so it’s all in the chasm.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I've had this poster in class!

[–] Fosheze 9 points 1 month ago

Dark matter is just the friends we made along the way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Isaac Newton — 'To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me'

[–] Diplomjodler3 7 points 1 month ago

Who would win? All the physicists or one slitty boi?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Cosmology and astrophysics are considered classical? I would expect both quantum physics and relativity to play a major role nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

At least cosmology does use some serious quantum physics, even quantum field theory. Source: took 1 year of theoretical cosmology lectures.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

We have this on the wall in my physics class

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

Naïve question: Is there a reason why electric and magnetic fields look so similar?

edit: in assuming it's something to do with direction / polarity?

[–] SpeakerToLampposts 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They're similar in some respects, different in others; this happens to only show ways they're similar. Specifically, it only shows dipole (two-pole) fields, with the field lines running from one pole (North or +) to the other (South or -).

But there are also electric monopoles: things that're only + (e.g. protons) or - (e.g. electrons), which'll have field lines radiating out in all directions rather than looping back. Magnets are different in that as far as we know, magnetic monopoles don't exist. Every North pole's directly attached to a South pole and vice versa. You can get magnets with more than two poles, or even more complex arrangements (e.g. refrigerator magnets normally have alternating North and South stripes), but they'll always have equal amounts of Northness and Southness, so the net magnetic charge is always zero.

Another (related) difference is that moving electric charges (e.g. electric currents in a wire) create loops of magnetic field. That is, the field line just goes in a circle around the moving charge, rather than from N to S. Since there's no such thing (as far as we know) as a magnetic charge, that can't happen with the electric field.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Wow, that's really interesting - thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Naïve answer: A magnetic field is an electric field moving through time. There's some matric math that equates moving electric charges to magnetic force, I think Maxwell's equations? So it's kind of about direction, but through time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

damn you doing philosophy dirty

[–] RecursiveParadox 1 points 1 month ago

Very cool poster, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Science has always been wrong, converging towards the truth. The scientific method is based on this. It is not the first, nor the last time, that a scientist has to throw years or even centuries of research into the trash, silently retiring in tears. Precisely now with the discoveries of Jame Webb it is becoming increasingly evident that the standard model, the BigBang as understood until now and the expansion, among other things, are no longer valid as such..