ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2022-01-06 05:08 pm
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Pushing the Standard Model

Here's a review of physics from 2021

I keep waiting for people to find gravitons, but honestly, I'm kind of glad they haven't.  As much damage as they've done with other scientific advances, they don't need graviton technology where fuckups can crack a planet's crust or fling a space station across the galaxy.
siliconshaman: black cat against the moon (Default)

[personal profile] siliconshaman 2022-01-07 12:55 am (UTC)(link)

I suspect the problem with Gravitons and finding them, is that they don't actually exist. There is a case to be made that the reason the Standard Model and Special Relativity don't reconcile is that the SM describes particles, and SR is describing a distortion or stretching in space/time, which only behaves somewhat like a force, but isn't really, and thus it doesn't have a particle to act as it's mediator.

Of the fundamental forces, gravity is a different animal really.

Except that gravity kind of does have gravitons. Down at the Planck scale of the universe even the fabric of space/time is 'granular' or quantised. So, a gravitational distoritian behaves as if it is made up of particles or wavelets... basically, virtual particles that don't exist, but reality behaves as if they do. (boojums, not quarks if you like)

Of course, I could be wrong, but that's how it seems to me. Not sure if that advances things however... which is probably just as well as you say. Because one of the things you could do with gravitions is create some nifty wormholes with fairly little power.

Which doesn't sound bad, until you realise you could open a 1cm wormhole connecting outer space with the inside of someones skull. Death by slurrrp!

siliconshaman: black cat against the moon (Default)

Re: Thoughts

[personal profile] siliconshaman 2022-01-07 01:18 am (UTC)(link)

The problem with sucking the air out of a room, is that most rooms aren't air-tight. (although I can see why that would slip your mind.)

Mucking about with the local field might be possible. But Planets have honking big fields that would take a LOT of energy to fiddle with, even on a small scale. I don't think you could do more than reduce or increase a small area by a barely measurable percentage.. at least, not with the power our tech level makes available. Hence why really small wormholes would be more likely at first. Another reason why venting rooms isn't likely to be practical. I mean, you could, but it would take a really long time. (although, tiny wormhole and a high pressure air line would one way of getting fresh air into somewhere that needs it.)

And yeah, Wavicles probably, just virtual ones that don't exist, but everything around them behaves as if they do.

Edited 2022-01-07 01:20 (UTC)
kengr: (Default)

[personal profile] kengr 2022-01-07 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
Well electric and magnetic forces can be described as distortions of space-time too. Really.

It's just that the equations are *different* for gravity. Don't recall details, it was a long time ago, and involved stuff like tensor calculus.

The late Dr. Robert Forward described a bunch of ways we *could* play with gravity that aren't that far outside the box.

Mostly a matter of engineering problems. Mostly needing to create hyperdense matter and stabilize it. Likely doable, but a major pain.

Check out his book Indistinguishable from Magic