Christopher Caudwell has some pretty excellent critiques of bourgeois science. Scientific progress has stalled because it is no longer profitable for the bourgeoisie, and the world’s best scientists are all bootlickers, at least inside the imperial core. There’s a reason the best physicists in the 20th century were all communists. But China thankfully is turning this situation around.
“The nature of this elementary particle is best expressed through these thirty equations.”
“Ok, ok, but what do those actually mean in reality?”
“Reality?”
It’s not difficult. Gravity is like magnetism for things that aren’t magnetic.
Also for those that are magnetic
You okay op?
I’m in geoscience. Physicists are nerds. Touch grass, ya dweebs. We wear hiking clothes on campus and we aren’t going on fieldwork until July. It’s called dedication.
Now do doctors of sociology
0 to alcoholism in 11 years.
What do you mean you don’t have desk whiskey? EVERYONE has desk whiskey! Even the counselors!
Genuinely we can’t tell what it is. We once thought it was just a normal pull due to mass until Einstein proved us wrong during a solar eclipse where we could see stars that shouldn’t be visible from our current position in orbit. Then we get into how it works, WHICH THERE IS NO TELLING AS THERE ARE TO MANY GOD DAMNED VARIABLES INVOLVED.
You’re fucking with me, right?
Stars were visible that shouldn’t have been visible?
What am I missing?
Stars that were behind the sun (within the radius of the sun, geometrically speaking) were visible due to gravitational lensing
Oh ok. That messed me all up.
I’ll have to look into that.
It isn’t directly analogous because one is gravitational and the other is not, but if you’ve ever watched a ship sail beyond the horizon, sometimes you can see a reflection of the sail after it is no longer in direct sight, because the way that light can reflect around the curvature of the earth. It’s a pretty crazy phenomenon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage
In the case of the OP, as light from distant stars approach the sun, some of their light that may normally have passed to the side of the sun and beyond the earth, thus rendering them invisible, are instead ‘bent’ back towards the earth by the sun’s gravitational well. But since the sun is so luminous we normally cannot see those stars. If the sun were somehow dark we would see a collection of tiny, distorted stars around the perimeter of it.
To metaphorize: imagine a ball rolling straight from a point directly in front of you, but at an angle such that it won’t roll to you. Now imagine a dip in the ground, not deep enough to cause it to fall in and not escape, but enough to cause the ball to curve as it rolls, sending it to you instead. The sun acts in a similar manner on light.
