/sci/ - Science & Math

Nobody knows. It is one of the most important unresolved questions in physics.

Plain and simple:
We don't know.

But we've got pretty good models of what it does.

It's magic.

It's just a fundamental part of the universe you daft fucks.

Plain and Simple:
Go and get a PhD in Physics and get noble prize for knowing the answer.

Good luck.

>>4296536
That is a non-explanation. It provides no information.

>>4296540

What caused the hydrogen atom to have the weight it does?

It's just what happened.

They're searching for particles called gravitrobs that are supposed to cause gravity

>>4296530
>>4296531

I don't know what these idiots are talking about, but we have a very good idea of how gravity works. The stress-energy tensor is equal to a differential equation of the metric tensor. Objects then follow geodesics through the space defined by the metric tensor.

>>4296552
In layman terms?

>>4296540
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

This is on magnetics but its one of the four forces just like gravity.

Now before you say
>YOU CANT EXPLAIN IT SO ITS A RELIGION
No, we came to the conclusion these forces exist over years and years of research. It's true we don't know why the forces exist, but they do

>>4296545
It's a curiosity stopper. We'd still be wondering why lightning makes fire as we huddle in our cold dark caves at that rate. "It's just a fundamental property of the universe".

Bah. It's a non-statement.


>>4296552
That's HOW gravity works. Not the source cause. We say "why does it act like this?" "No idea". Same for the origin of mass. "Why is this this electron mass?" No clue, we just measured it.

GR is great, but it doesn't answer OP's question.

>>4296560
Hey, I'm on your side.

I'm talking to
>>4296536

>>4296561

>Bah. It's a non-statement.

No it isn't. We can still work to understand gravity, but why it arose is just what happened when the universe was created. Refer to my hydrogen atom question.

>>4296556
if you want to understand complex things with any degree of accuracy you don't want layman's terms

your trollin ....but again it is a question we would all like the answer to. we only know what it effects and all that fun stuff.

>>4296565
It does not constrain your expectations of how future events will unfold. "It's just because that's the way things are" has zero information content.

The pressence of a massive object

am i getting trolled?

u learn in like 11th grade that gravity is due to MASS

saging

>>4296589
tee hee
This is so damn cute.

>>4296556
Mass/energy/momentum tell spacetime how to curve. Things then follow "straight" worldlines through that curved spacetime.

>>4296561
What would you accept as an answer to a why question? If I told you that energy warps spacetime because blah blah blah, you would still probably say "thats HOW it works, not why." There is no answer to the question because haven't allowed any room for it.

>>4296605
I guess what it comes down to more precisely is the origin of mass.

Why are the particle masses we observe the values we observe? There's a fuckload of free variable in our models that are only filled in my experimental measurement, and that's generally taken as a limitation of current theory, as more and more such things are discovered to arise from fewer and fewer fundamental principles.

>>4296612
Not to mention the fact that the bulk of the universe's mass is very poorly understood (dark matter).

Pic related.

>>4296605
what do you mean by curved space time?