Why does gravity exist?

The reason planets orbit stars is due to gravity. The reason stars glow is due to heat. What's the reason for gravity existing?

4 points · 4 comments · view on lemmy.world

4 Comments

Pons_Aelius@kbin.social · 12 pts · 3y

There is no reason.

It simply is.

Humans have found 4 forces that control the universe. (there many be a fifth involving quarks but that is still to be proven)

Electromagnetism

Gravity.

Strong Nuclear force

Weak nuclear Force.

Everything we experience in this universe is the interaction of these 4 forces.

Arete@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3y

I'm a decade out of school but I think you can show that any theory that allows a massless spin-2 particle necessarily gives rise to gravity as a force. I remember seeing how this exact particle emerged when solving equations of motion for bosonic string theory and being pretty impressed (iirc it was a symmetric traceless rank 2 tensor field or something similar and the Prof had to handwave a bit on it being equivalent)

So maybe we have gravity simply because there are a lot of ways to construct a universe with it and only a few special cases without it.

style99@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y

This is a fair question, and I doubt we've really heard the last of this subject.

Hexagon@feddit.it · -6 pts · 3y

The same reason why everything else exists: We Have No Idea (tm)