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We do. Thinking a bit about what that means, we have photographs showing how the physical entity we model as atoms interact with light, and can confirm that the
by thisiscorrect 6y ago
We do. Thinking a bit about what that means, we have photographs showing how the physical entity we model as atoms interact with light, and can confirm that the theory lines up with experiment.
If we adopt that same definition for spacetime, we also have photographs of it, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_29,_1919#Observations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_29,_1919#... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens#Gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens#Gallery.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoAtoms aren’t just something we’ve modeled — they’re a physical thing, i.e. matter. We can sense them directly, not just infer their existence by measuring related phenomena. I realize when you get into theoretical physics the “thingness” of concepts becomes more and more abstract, but atoms don’t fall into that bucket.
- thisiscorrect 6y agoYou sense spacetime directly too. It's what holds you do this planet we inhabit. I think atomic phenomena may feel somehow more familiar because it takes far less energy to make them dynamic than it does for gravitational phenomena. If we were somehow huge beings made of binary stars or something, gravity would probably be the very familiar force and atomic phenomena almost inconceivably small to you.
- jodrellblank 6y agoAtomic phenomena are almost inconcievably small to me. There's around a hundred trillion atoms in a human body cell, and around a hundred trillion cells in a human body, plus or minus an order of magnitude or two. It's astonishing to me that people in the early 1900s could measure and calculate the charge on an electron, or that Marie Curie had to process tons of pitchblende to purify micrograms of Radium - and could, and did. Or that Rutherford could say where most of the mass inside an atom is, and split the nucleus of Nitrogen atoms - 1/1000th of the size of the whole atom - and tell what was happening down at that scale - using the technology of 1917.
- kamaal 6y agoAs a kid I read the whole Michelson–Morley experiment in a public library. It was a quite a peek into how the science of that era was done. Basically you start with some base information(axioms and postulates), then you gather some experimental evidence for those axioms and postulates. You establish some rules on which your experimental and observational universe works. Then what follows is volumes and volumes of Math. If Im not wrong relativity itself was developed over a decade. And I'd assume it took tons and tons iterations, retries and tweaking to make it work. Where common people like us get lost is looking at Symbol manipulation directly. At that stage Math scares the day light out of us. The right approach is to start with your own axioms, postulates, truths and symbols and start working from there. This is really like some newbie seeing a super massive code base and thinking it could be outside their reach to ever work with such a thing. But if you look at it carefully. All there is to it is loops, condition statements, operations, variables and basic abstractions.
- drran 6y agoSpacetime is defined as [x,y,z;t] - 4d array of data. > You sense spacetime directly too. It's what holds you do this planet we inhabit. Nope.
- enkid 6y agoI don't see the distinction you're making between "sensing" and "measuring related phenomena." What's different from using a specialized microscope to take a picture of an atom and using a telescope to take a picture of black hole?
- Balgair 6y agoThe amount of grant funding! ;P
- bobcostas55 6y ago>We can sense them directly What does this even mean? Unless you're talking about some supernatural "atomic sense", there's obviously no way to "sense them directly" - we sense them through their interaction with other things combined with our model of those things and the interaction.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoOkay, that's fair. But taken to its extreme, we sense everything through its interaction with other things. But obviously, things exist; not everything can be just a mathematical model.
- headsupernova 6y agoWhy not?
- drran 6y agoMathematics is too powerful. It can express anything, both real and unreal things. Physical world has limitations.
- bobcostas55 6y agoCheck out Max Tegmark's writings on the mathematical universe, some very interesting stuff in that direction.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoWill do, thanks for the rec!