this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 169 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Gravity is the weakest fundamental force, yes. At least, at relatively close distances. The advantage gravity has is that it never quite goes away, no matter how far you are.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

So it's like humans? πŸ€”

We aren't particularly strong or fast, but we became apex predators because we never. Stop. Coming.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Also, we, never, stop, cumming.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So much to cum, so much to cum,

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So what's wrong with cumming the backstreet

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You'll never know if you don't cum

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

You'll never cum if you don't blow

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

cum cum, cumcumcum cum, get ur cumcum CUM----CUM

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

AND ALL THAT'S CUMMING IS CUMMMM

only shooting cummmm breaks the mOwOld

(Smash mouth were so ahead of the curve, they had OwO in their lyrics in 1999)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Can you imagine being those antelope being hunted by early human ancestors -

"Ok, bob, we just bolted at 40mph for a minute or so, they're not going to find us again."

"Clarice, you said that the last 8 times and they still showed up! They're unnatural! They just keep following and following us! Alex smashed his shin that last run, and I don't know how many more times I can run myself! We're doomed Clarice! Doomed!"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago

It's basically a zombie movie, but the main character is Bambi.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

They cannot be bargained with. They cannot be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.

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

Exactly. Raise your hand. Great, you overcame gravity for a second. Keep your hand raised for a minute. 10 minutes. An hour. Fuck, gravity doesn't stop. It's exactly like us.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

about to make ourselves go away though.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean yeah but also you reverse that square enough and it's effectively zero

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But never actually zero, unlike those other quitter "forces"

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Is that actually true? I'm not an expert but I thought all forces extend our into infinity. I thought we just allowed them to go to 0 at a certain radius for the sake of making the math manageable.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Not the person you replied to, and not really an expert either, but I can tell you that the W and Z bosons (force carriers for the weak force) are very short lived and can only travel through space so far before they decay. This effectively puts a cap on the distance of weak interactions.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Strong force is the same.

I don't know if it's shorter than the weak force, but you gotta be in an atom's nucleus to experience it

Edit: i just realized I may have confused people - strong force has a limited distance, not that it's because they decay.

Edit 2: If i ever got a PhD or master's even in Physics, id probably write a book on how "The Universe Demands Laziness." Because pretty much everything in physics ends up with a system taking shortcuts to save a little bit of energy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

If i ever got a PhD or master’s even in Physics, id probably write a book on how β€œThe Universe Demands Laziness.” Because pretty much everything in physics ends up with a system taking shortcuts to save a little bit of energy.

This is how I teach both physics and chemistry. Electrons are lazy - they’re going to chill in the lowest energy level they can. They fill in sub shells like people getting on a bus - you aren’t going to sit next to someone else unless you have to, you’re going to sit probably as close to the front (nucleus) as you can.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

TIL the Univers was written in Haskell

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

Ostensibly sure but really it's all hacked together perl

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

I don't know if it's shorter than the weak force, but you gotta be in an atom's nucleus to experience it

That's what she said.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The strong force also gets stronger with distance

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Except the energy required to increase the distance between the particles is enough that it ends up creating more particles and the distance never gets any more distancier?

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

So this is where my inexperience kicks in, but I don't understand how the strong force can function in the same way considering that gluons are massless.

The W and Z bosons having mass prevents them from being able to travel at the speed of light, and therefore they experience time and can only travel some limited distance before decaying into fermions.

But since gluons do not have mass, they, like photons, do not experience time -- and so how could they have a half life?

In my mental model of the strong force I assumed that they simply were created and destroyed in an exchange between quarks -- much like how photons get absorbed/emitted by electrons. But this alone does not cause a limit on the distance of strong interactions, so I assumed that mechanically any limit on the strong force's distance must function differently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Gluons do not have a half life?

Remember that they DO make an exchange - Gluons have color charge - red, green and blue. QCD is the magical realm of color charge.

The hardest part for quantum anything is grasping the "probability aspect" means spontaneous things can happen. In the case of QCD, as you put energy into separating quarks it becomes infinitely more likely to pull particles out of the vacuum than to separate them.

QCD is involved in fusion in a similar way - two protons will oppose each other with infinitely more force the closer they get because their charges are repulsive. The faster two protons are flung at eachother, the probability of the quarks binding increases.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Nah, at some point the simulation we live in is going to round down to save computing power.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Is that simulation in the room with us ri

WARNING: Unexpected false vacuum decay.
Reverting current state.
3,245,333,345,728,345,876 recoveries until reboot.

us right now? Hurrr durr

WARNING: Unexpected false vacuum decay.
Reverting current state.
3,245,333,345,728,345,875 recoveries until reboot.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Are you the mirror universe version of DarkViperAU?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Electromagnetic doesn't go away either. It's that damn negavite charge neutralizing the stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Aren't all forces subject to the inverse square law?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Dipoles are, effectively, not


so if you have a charged bit and another opposite charged bit, while an inverse relationship might exist between either one, the net effect is that it drops off much faster.

The thing with gravity is it tends to go one way, unlike, say, charge.

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

Sounds like a stalker.