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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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What’s the context?
The top shows Newton’s formula for calculating gravitational force between two bodies. The bottom shows Coulomb’s law for calculating the force between 2 electrically charged particles. The joke is that the Coulomb just copied the formulas from Newton’s that was published nearly a century earlier.
With how gravity isn't a force in general relativity meaning Newton's formula isn't technically correct in a general sense makes it funny Coulomb's "copied" formula turned out to be the correct one.
Isn't general relativity just a way to interpret reality instead of what reality is?
I mean, just a very accurate model of reality. But anything can be anything in any model, which is cool as long as the model has some kind of utility.
(?)
Or, are we accepting that objectively gravity is definetely not a force?
General Relativity describes gravity as the geometric result of space and time being the medium through which matter travels. Quantum Field Theory hasn't been able to describe gravity at the subatomic level though. So in conclusion I'd say we have no idea if the description of gravity we have using General Relativity is 'real' or just a really good prediction tool.
I'm also not really sure how we would differentiate between calling something reality and a perfectly predictive model.
I think you could say that most astronomers consider gravity geometry, not a force, but some physicists might not agree.