re: #106 LudwigVanQuixote

OK. You are awesome. It really is a tragedy that you don’t look into this more. So, I would like to encourage you the best way I know.

what is the remaining 1/4 of the force problem, You already got the hardest part. Just finish it up and tell the whole story.

Sorry to disappoint, but your vignette about the block on the body and the springs on the feet totally dizened my brain, and I’m unsure what is even being asked any more.

I’ll tell you what has really bothered me about this problem is how the two bodies manage to stay distinct in the first place. The way I figure, there must be quantum effects or at least strong/weak force effects causing a quantum-level repulsion between the surface of the two “bodies” at the point where they make contact (or more precisely — near-contact). I mean, if matter is 99% nothingness but is instead an ethereal web of nuclei barely held together, then what the hell is preventing two bodies — drawn together by gravity — from fusing into each other like two balls of cotton candy?

The only explanation is that the same forces which cause a consistent cohesion holding one body into a self-contained unit at the same time present a repulsive barrier which on a quantum level prevents another body from merging with it. So that a quantum effect at a sub-nano scale is already causing us to “float” above the earth’s surface at all times. And we are therefore not pushing against the earth itself when we jump, but rather against this “force field” (to use a retro-sounding phrase — sorry I’m not conversant in all the terminology), and that an equivalent force field on the bottom of my shoes prevents the earth from melding into me.

So, our “jumping” away from the earth is not actually Newtonian, but requires quantum effects to fully explain it as well.

That’s the part of the two-body problem which bothers me.