It depends on where you draw the line (heh) on “straightness” and “flatness”. Some planes on gems or geodes are pretty flat, but probably not perfectly flat. Another example is a spider’s web between two points. That’s a pretty straight line if it’s taut, but again, probably not exactly perfect.
Do straight lines and flat planes exist in nature?
Submitted 1 year ago by bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee to [deleted]
Comments
Thavron@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
DarkThoughts@fedia.io 1 year ago
Nothing is perfectly flat, neither in nature nor man made. It's purely a mathematical concept as every surface has some form of texture if you look close enough.
Thavron@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Well, yes. My point exactly.
neptune@dmv.social 1 year ago
A string with weight will be a pulled under gravity. Yes even a taut spider web.
Paragone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
maybe somebody else pointed this out:
Light ALWAYS travels in its idea of a straight-line.
Always.
It doesn’t matter whether it is bent by gravity or refraction, from its perspective, it kept going straight.
Only an “outside viewer” sees any non-straight-line-ness being done, but the outside-viewer isn’t seeing the curved-space or the curved-refractive-index that the photon saw.
Klear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well, kinda, but the line the photon is contracted in its POV into a point. Whatever destination is has, it’s already there as far as it’s concerned. It doesn’t experience time given that it’s moving at the speed of light.
MeanEYE@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Short answer, depends on perspective. For example surface of perfectly still lake could be considered flat, but on macro level it follows curvature of the earth. But we still use water to level our buildings, because radius of a planet is so big. On microscopic level it’s anything but flat.
Someone else mentioned spider silk danging. It’s also another great example, but the same perspective clause applies. But usually crystals and some geological features tend to have flat features.
tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 1 year ago
Lines and planes in the mathematical sense are 1 and 2 dimensional. They don’t have any height (and lines also no width). So they can’t exist as a physical object (made out of atoms) as they are already 3 dimensional.
They only exist as a concept.
bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Then, o pedant, do straight or flat objects (thus linelike, planelike) exist?
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why ask a pedantic question and be upset by a pedantic answer?
pennomi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Graphene is a great example of a planar molecule, within 1 atom of tolerance.
inlandempire@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Their manifestation in our world was limited, they have already gone to another plane of existence
angrystego@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The fact that something isn’t a 3d object doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Does a line of contrast between 2 colors exist? Does a movie projected at a wall exist?
tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 1 year ago
Does a line of contrast between 2 colors exist?
I’d say no. And even if it did, those colours are made out of atoms or light, both of which are “fuzzy” and 3D and can’t make a proper line.
Does a movie projected at a wall exist?
Sure. There is photons bouncing of a wall and the information they carry we call “the movie”. I guess that counts. But the relevant bit is the wall and again it’s made out of atoms and there is not a proper flat 2D surface.
yarr@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Depending on scale. Is the surface of the lake flat?
Once you experience true level you will never go back.
bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee 1 year ago
True level must be like true symbols (like, in the idea that there are true names and words. Like a divine language).
If you have a true level or symbol then you have something, just as good as reality, but manipulable like language. The best of both worlds.
And even better, you need never leave the confines of the inside of your mind ever again. You can live, within your construct of perfect god-language, and interact with the world from there. Safe and powerful.
kokopelli@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Man… are you good? You sound like a guy who showed up at my house and started saying that the pyramids and stars would aline and tell us the meaning of the universe. Also that açaí berries were the ultimate nutrition. Hope you’re doing okay there.
Spitzspot@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Neutrinos travel in a straight line.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Unfortunately (fortunately?) the space they’re traveling through is curved. It was a good attempt though neutrinos.
jbrains@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Edwin A. Abbott has entered the chat…
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The neutrino neither knows that nor does it care about it.
In it’s reality, the line remains perfectly straight.
bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Not to mention quantum fuzzing
Krudler@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They don’t, although they do not interact with other particles, they obey move as waves, like all other energy in the universe.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, they are mathematical constructs. Everything in nature is composed of matter and the like, so there are no perfectly straight lines or flat planes.
Even a beam of light curves and refracts as it interacts with matter and space over a long enough distance.
vrek@programming.dev 1 year ago
Unless the light is in a vacuum like space
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Gravitational lensing would like a work
SPRUNT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Cubed pyrite is one of my favorite examples of this.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
That’s very cool, I see why you like it
sarchar@programming.dev 1 year ago
I think we’ve got enough evidence (proof?) that the universe is flat, and straight lines will continue straight forever and never intersect.
Whether there’s an actual thing that exists that does this? Dunno. Two parallel particles I guess?
MinusPi@yiffit.net 1 year ago
Wut? Spacetime is anything but flat.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
I am pretty sure we have no such evidence of the sort. Last i checked the universe being torus/donut shaped was still in the cards.
sarchar@programming.dev 1 year ago
Wikipedia, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
“As of 2023 current observational evidence suggests that the observable universe is spatially flat with an unknown global structure.”
I don’t fully understand this stuff, so I dunno.
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sorry. Straight parallel like never intersect
sarchar@programming.dev 1 year ago
Right, my bad.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A frozen lake.
A spider’s thread when it’s climbing downwards.
snf@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Aaaaactchhhually a frozen lake would follow the local curvature of the earth
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Still it took >12h before someone started to discuss that :)
Sizzler@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
I’ll going to call you on that one. Surely gravity defines the surface of the lake, not local curvature.
Audalin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
According to mathematical platonism, yes.
Otherwise we have no idea. We have some models of physics, none perfectly describing our universe. We don’t know the structure of space, or the structure of time.
Even if we did: what would it mean for a line or a plane to exist? There could be equivalent descriptions of our universe, some including those as objects and some only as emergent properties.
LouNeko@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A lot of people talk about straightness and flatness as mathematical concepts. But I think OP means it in a technical sense, as in flat like your phone screen or straight as the edges of the screen but in nature. In this sense, flatness or straightness is defined as a finite number of measured points on a surface of which the coordinates all lie between 2 mathematicaly flat/straight parallel tolerance planes/lines. By that definition, depending on what a person would consider flat, say 0.002 mm between the planes/lines, there are definetly naturally occurring crystals that would pass that test.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Is the Higgs Field a flat plane?
bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Right after they mow, otherwise it’s rather fluffy.
finickydesert@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Yes they do
addmen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Yes.
nutsack@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Damn that was fast I was just going to link a picture of my ass
bloom_of_rakes@lemm.ee 1 year ago
When you zoom in on those pristine facets it looks like a gravel driveway
meekah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean, if you zoom far enough, its just a few atoms floating around in mostly nothing.
Define “flat” and “straight”