Fun_People Archive

10 Feb

Gravity Faeries

Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2) From: Peter Langston <psl> Date: Tue, 10 Feb 98 10:56:07 -0800 To: Fun_People Precedence: bulk Subject: Gravity Faeries Forwarded-by: jmorton@euler.Berkeley.EDU (John Morton) Forwarded-by: Dawn Karuna Erb <dkerb@u.washington.edu> [This is from the webpage for my physics class... ] A student wrote: My high school physics teacher told us that the earth itself did not cause gravity, it is gravity fairies. Billions and billions of tiny fairies so small that it is impossible to detect them. Whenever an object loses contact with the ground, the gravity fairies would work together to pull the object back to the ground. The gravity fairies are infinitely fast, so when objects crash into the ground they are able to get out from underneath the object so they don't get crushed. Since gravity fairies are too small to be detected using any method, my class was not able to disprove our teacher's theory. How do we know that gravity fairies do not exist? What if they do exist and all the standard physics we are being taught are untrue? Would you be out of a job? Prof. Seidler responds: I shall give two answers to your questions. The first, I hope, will satisfy you. The second, I hope, will satisfy your high school teacher. Answer #1: A fundamental premise of the scientific endeavor is that all theories must be potentially testable. In particular, any 'theory' which either does not allow (or actually forbids) an experiment to test its veracity is not part of science. Hence, the existence or non-existence of gravity faeries probably isn't going to show up in the next edition of RHK. The existence or non-existence of gravity faeries is irrelevant for physics. As for your final question, I don't know if I would be out of a job, but I would sure sue the little suckers for pulling me down a flight of stairs last week. Answer#2: Assume the existence of gravity faeries. It follows then that gravity faeries must work under a variety of hazardous conditions, from underwater, to high altitude, to distant solar systems. Faced with regular exposure to such conditions in the workplace, there is little doubt that they would form a labor un- ion. {Your high school teacher will understand labor unions reeeeaally well, trust me on this.} History shows that after for- mation of the UGFI (Union of Gravity Faeries Interplanetary), one can expect lobbying and subsequent legislation reducing the hours that gravity faeries must work, and placing limitations on work- place exposure to excessive heat, cold, vacuum, or physics 121 demonstrations. Now we get to the crux of the argument. As the universe would necessarily be a 'union shop' ( i.e. only members of the UGFI can supply gravity), the limitations on hours worked together with the UGFI's policy of limiting membership "to prevent a glut of gravity on the market", would be certain to result in either frequent gravity outages, or else legislation to de- crease the legal standard of g=-9.8m/s^2y-hat (near earth's surface). However, there are no reports of widespread gravity outages, nor is there any evidence that lobbyists from the UGFI have made contributions to any political party in an attempt to influence the new legal value of g. It therefore follows that the assump- tion of the existence of gravity faeries must be incorrect.

© 1998 Peter Langston