> Gravity, the thinking goes, can escape our brane and extend into the bulk. That explains why it’s so weak. All the other forces must play in only three spatial dimensions, while gravity can extend itself out to four, spreading itself much too thin in the process.<p>Wouldn't this cause gravitational force to fall off with distance using something other than an inverse-square law? I think this explanation would be a better fit for the weak force than gravity for this reason. Thoughts?<p>More broadly: inverse-square behavior (Gravity, EM etc) strikes me as an intrinsic property of 3D geometry; more so of a tell of dimensionality than the magnitude of the force. (I believe the article is inferring higher dimensionality from relative magnitude, vice distance falloff)
If anyone wants a super approachable lecture on Neutron stars, this was released just a couple of weeks ago - <a href="https://youtu.be/I12SQ7YOebY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/I12SQ7YOebY</a>
> The force of gravity is weak. And not just a little bit weak. It’s so much weaker than the other three fundamental forces—electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces—that it’s almost impossible to provide analogies.<p>Nothing in nature prevents gravity from just being super weak. Some forces could just be super weak.<p>The unspoken premise of gravity being weaker than other forces is that all forces were unified at some point. So iff you assume all forces in nature were once one force, then gravity being weak is an anomaly.
Far from expert in the field, but assuming that gravity is acts in a 3+ND and we observe it in our 3D world, shouldn't we observe weird peculiarities with it rather that just its amplitude?<p>Think that you live on a line, and you see projections of a 2d object doing circles on top of you. You would see the shade moving and changing sizes in a non-explainable manner to you.
Extra dimensions are always a desperate measure. If you add them to your theory you open up a huge parameter space, because you have no clue about the number, size and topology of the extra dimensions. What is missing is a real physical symmetry or reason that would enforce the existence of extra dimensions and on the other side restricts its geometry and topology.<p>Just adding more parameters to your theory will allow you to overfit the data better, but that does not mean you understand more about nature.
To what degree are these Nautilus stories based off of the work of a single researcher or lab that does not have broader consensus amongst the research community?<p>What's a good way for a layperson to tell if this is a new scientific consensus arrived at after hundreds of researchers come to the same conclusion or a breakthrough result that has shocked the entire research community?
I'm ignorant when it comes to physics, admittedly, so please forgive me if my question has an obvious answer... But when I read articles like this, in particular when they mention branes, I want to ask: How do we know that dark matter is not just some interaction coming from the "bulk"?
Where are the flaggers? Come on, you're slacking off.<p>Neutron Stars? Other Dimensions? This has GOT to be woke, right?<p>The level of flagging on HN lately is totally out of control.<p>And they complained that the woke were cancelling people...