Growing up I read Dilbert in the paper every morning. At some point I got one of the compilation books and for some reason in an epilogue Adams included his alternate theory of gravity which was essentially that gravity as force didn't exist and things pressed down on each other because everything was expanding at the same rate. He said he had yet to find anyone who could refute this.
Even at 12 I could tell this guy was an annoying idiot. Loved the comic though.
> He said he had yet to find anyone who could refute this.
Which is why it's so important for people understand the Principle of Parsimony (aka. Occams Razor), and Russels Teapot.
Also, refuting it is rather easy, and doesn't even require modern technology, Henry Cavendish performed the experiment in 1797 [1]. Nothing in the experimental setup would change if all involved objects expanded.
> things pressed down on each other because everything was expanding at the same rate
I don't think this originates with him, it sounds like an amusing joke a physicist would say because the math happens to be equivalent, and there is not an experiment to differentiate between the two.
Yeah, at the end of one of his books, I forget which, he described how he could manifest reality, such as getting a specific score on the GMAT not by targeted studying but by staring as hard as possible at the mail before he opened it. Absolute lunatic.
--absolute lunatic.
To paraphrase Adams, he always said manifestation was likely not "magic" but that when you tried it out for yourself, it *seemed* like it happened by magic.
I don’t know Scott’s theory, but gravity as a force indeed doesn’t exist. That’s a classical physics concept.
For the last century, the accepted theory is that gravity is indeed not a force but a manifestation of the space-time curvature. That’s one of the main points of general relativity.
My physics is very rusty and very basic, but I don't think classical physics said gravity was a force either. eg in Newton's 2nd law or engineering mechanics, gravity is the "a" or the "g" not the "F".
:) I see your confusion. But the F is caused by gravity there. The special case you are refering to (I think you are thinking about the Weight = g * mass of body) comes from a more universal expression.
If you look at the proper expression that calculates it's force, it becomes clear:
F = G * m1 * m2/ r^2 (so, gravity is the force between masses).
P.S. G is the universal constant of Gravity here, not the gravity itself.
Yup, knew that equation. My point was I only ever recalled the effects of gravity on mass being called a force, and never gravity itself being called a force. eg no mass, no force - gravity being a field that causes forces (on mass) rather than the force itself.
That distant memory came from engineering school, where it was classical mechanics all the way down. The only non classical stuff was just a tiny amount in a first year physics paper.
Then again, maybe the way classical physics got taught was a bit different after Einstein so as not to directly contradict relativity. Eg maybe before relativity it really was described as a force?
Well congratulations, you just stated the equivalence principle that led Einstein to GR (you need special relativity and a bit of maths and you’re there)!
"Everything expanding at the same rate" sounds vaguely similar to the truth that what we feel as gravity (standing on earth) is us and everything around us accelerating upwards from the center of the gravity well - and what we feel as "pressure" on our feet is from the earth "holding us up" (in crude terms). So, it sounds crazy but it's not too distant from the truth.
> Humor often comes from the weird thoughts and emotions involved in a situation, as opposed to the simple facts. The best fodder for humor can be communicated by a simple description of the situation and then saying "So then I was thinking..."
Based on your replies I doubt there’s anything that would actually convince you, but as it happens the data is pretty public and there are plenty of charts charts:
Untrue, I just looked at my phone and I have an NYT alert from 3 hours ago: "Inflation hit the highest rate in a generation last month. Consumer prices rose by nearly 7%..."
I got Frontier after moving into a house with no internet in upstate New York ("Upstate" being 100 Mi north of NYC). I ordered the 20Mbit plan and after missing and having to call to reschedule 3 installs (w/ 12 hour windows), the first words out of the installers mouth was "you got scammed". Indeed our signal was so weak we were only able to sustain about 0.5kbps. They wanted $75/mo for this and made it as hard as possible to cancel.
The basic history of Frontier in my area is that they bought up all of Verizon's old copper lines and have done exactly nothing to improve the capability. They don't even know what the capabilities ARE. Areas are either oversubscribed or so far from nodes that the signal is worthless. They're trying to squeeze every last cent out of rural houses with no other options and letting the underlying infrastructure slowly fail.
I ended up using a pretty performant (~50Mbit) LTE connection, hacked AT&T hotspot and yagi antenna for 2 years. Finally, as part of a rural broadband grant program New York State got Altice to come in-- probably in exchange for a monopoly in a more attractive part of the state. Now I have 300Mbit cable for $100/mo. Altice (aka Optimum) is also a terrible company, but Frontier still sends me postcards claiming to be "the best internet in <my town>".
These guys are selling a product that doesn't work. They deserve to be sued and I'm disappointed that New York State isn't involved.
Just replaced the battery and threw new thermal paste on my Mid-2014 15" for $300. Discrete graphics, no TouchBar and a keyboard with travel. I hope this thing runs for another 5 years.
Even at 12 I could tell this guy was an annoying idiot. Loved the comic though.