Mine hit me with the “We’re spending all this money on you now so you can’t grow up and say we didn’t spend money on you when your were a kid.”

  • Angry_Autist (he/him)
    link
    fedilink
    1826 days ago

    ‘Gravity is caused by the rotation of the earth’

    apparently that’s what they taught back when she was a kid

    But how even?!

      • Enkrod
        link
        fedilink
        225 days ago

        Maybe they mixed it up with magnetism? Because our magnetic field is due to the rotation of the earth’s iron-nickle core.

        • Angry_Autist (he/him)
          link
          fedilink
          124 days ago

          No, she specifically stated gravity and when she was being educated, geologists weren’t even aware that earth had a separate, differentially spinning core.

          Also this was Florida so our schoolbooks were 50 years out of date too

    • Muad'dib
      link
      fedilink
      English
      926 days ago

      Well that’s how it works in Larry Niven’s Ringworld and also Halo. They just thought the earth was a ring.

      • Angry_Autist (he/him)
        link
        fedilink
        1
        edit-2
        25 days ago

        Halo arrays and RIngworld work because objects in frictional contact with the inner side of the boundary material are imparted linear velocity by the motion of the structure, that’s not at all how it works on planets.

        Even if Earth were tide locked to the sun it would still have the same exact degree of pull on other mass-having bodies. A ring array that stops spinning has occupants who experience free fall

        • Muad'dib
          link
          fedilink
          English
          124 days ago

          Here’s another fun fact: A ringworld exerts zero net gravitational force on anyone inside of it. It’s one of the implications of shell theorem.

          • Angry_Autist (he/him)
            link
            fedilink
            122 days ago

            not exactly true, a sphereworld this would be thecase

            Around the edges of the ring structures you would get minute tidal effects

      • VindictiveJudge
        link
        fedilink
        English
        224 days ago

        It was either in one of the books or an easily missed line in Halo 1, but the Halos actually don’t spin fast enough for the amount of surface gravity they have, implying artificial gravity is involved.