What is the cause for spacetime or quantummechanics? Idk but somehow they don’t make it on the list of fundamental forces.
Well, they are not forces.
Comment on Gravity
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Gravity is a fundamental force just like electromagnetism (supposedly)
Fundamental means it cannot be explained by being caused by something else.
But then they say gravity is an effect caused by spacetime curvature and electromagnetism is caused by quantum phenomena.
What is the cause for spacetime or quantummechanics? Idk but somehow they don’t make it on the list of fundamental forces.
Classical science, for all the good it did and does, is an unironic joke and if aliens knew about it they’d be laughing at us.
marcos@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
But then they say gravity is an effect caused by spacetime curvature and electromagnetism is caused by quantum phenomena. What is the cause for spacetime or quantummechanics? Idk but somehow they don’t make it on the list of fundamental forces.
I don’t think we know enough about quantum mechanics to even make a guess, yet. I do know that the reason we wanted to find the Higgs Boson so much was because we thought it could help explain how things acquire mass, which could lead to figuring out antigravity. But then we found it and it wasn’t doing what was originally thought. Or something.
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
electromagnetism is caused by quantum phenomena.
Lol what no
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Fundamental force means we expect a carrier particle to explain it (for gravity that’s the Graviton, although it hasn’t been detected yet).
Not even remotely true.
Quantum mechanics is mostly that statistics is more complicated than we all thought . Seeking a cause for spacetime is interesting. It might be relevant to mention that there is a fundamental particle that imparts mass, which we call the Higgs Boson. I guess that could make mass and inertia something of a “fundamental force”.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Maybe i am wording it wrong. I did make the comment half joking but my current understanding of how magnetism really works, which my physics teacher was unable to answer has a chapter on wikipedia called Quantum-mechanical origin of magnetism
I have no degrees in this stuff though, i just think about them recreationally.
cynar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Quantum mechanical particles are very different things to classical ones.
A slightly better way of thinking about them is quantised fields. Particles and waves are simplifications of the underlying effect. There is no classical equivalent to work with to this, so we try and understand it as particle-wave duality etc.
In this case, a carrier particle is a (quantised) disturbance in the underlying field. If it has enough energy, it manifests as a physical particle. The higgs boson is an example of this. Below the required energy, you get virtual particles. These “borrow” energy, and so can never be seen directly, only inferred.
By example. Photons are the carrier particle of electromagnetism. Give the field energy and you get photons (light). Without that energy, the photons are virtual. Existing only between the 2 acting entities.
Different fields have different carrier particles. The photon is quite simple. It’s effectiveness decays as 1/r^2 . The strong force carriers are more complex. They can emit more carrier particles, allowing the field to grow with distance rather than decay.
To add more complexity. The various fields look to be aspects of the same field. At sufficient energies, they behave identically. We have figured out how to combine the electric, magnetic and weak fields. We have a handle on the strong field. The higgs field seems to also match into this. Gravity is a pain to study. We assume it should match in, but haven’t managed to work out how yet.
As for why the underlying field exists and follows the rules it does? We have no clue right now. The ‘why’ tends to follow the ‘what’, and we have yet to get a good handle on the ‘what’.
pcalau12i@lemmygrad.ml 3 weeks ago
Arguably, if we insist on trying to come up with the simplest way to explain non-relativistic quantum mechanics, that is to say, if we are very conservative and stick to classical explanations unless we absolutely are forced not to (rather than throwing our hands up and saying it’s all magic that’s impossible to understand, as most people do), then we find that it comes naturally to explain non-relativistic quantum mechanics by treating particles as excitations in a classical field. This alone can explain the interference-based paradoxes in completely classical terms, like double-slit or Elitzur-Vaidman paradox. The extension to quantum field theory then becomes rather natural and intuitive. imo
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The magnetic properties of certain materials (e.g. why an unmagnetized piece of iron sticks to a magnet of either polarization), the way permanent magnets work, is best explained by quantum mechanics.
However, the electromagnetic force itself doesn’t “arise” from quantum mechanics, and you can explain things like electromagnets quite will without considering quantum mechanics.
Usually you take the “classical” formula for a force and to inform your quantum mechanical model of particles, and that’s how you can arrive at things like deriving how permanent magnets work with the help of w quantum mechanics.
Generally, a lot of material science and chemistry is inherently quantum mechanical because the way atomic orbitals and molecular bonds work is heavily quantum mechanical.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Thanks for a we written reply.
Though i still dont quite get this
You seen to say if we can explain x without y then y cannot be fundamental to x.
But can electromagnetism at all emerge if the quantum mechanics dont exist to emerge things like magnetism and some of the behavior of electrons?