Is it possible that gravity and magnetic forces are the same thing? It is possible. The core of our planet is a magnetic field. Humans contain metals (Iron, Zinc, etc.). I haven't been able to find anything on Humans, but it seems fish muscles contain quite a bit of metals. If that is consistent of muscles of all species, it could explain why muscle weighs more than fat. Things that weigh less contain less metal. One rebuttal to this theory would ask this question; Why does gravity pull wood towards it, but a magnet does? The answer to that could be that our core has a much larger magnetic field than any man made magnet, and since their is probably a very low amount of metal, it doesn't get pulled in. Sorry if it seems rushed, this theory just came to me out of no where. Still searching for other information.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought muscles weighed more than fat because muscle is more dense. Also I think we would know by now if everything contained metal, which to my knowledge it does not.
Why are muscles more dense, and what in them makes them more dense. And maybe no one thought it was important to test for very small amounts of metals in certain things.
there are 4 conservative forces that we know of, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. gravity and magnetism, although similar in behavior, are two completely different things. gravity is attributed to the inverse square of the distace between two objects with mass, multiplied by the gravity constant G. the closer you are to a massive object, the larger its gravitational field ON you. similarly, magnetism is related to the inverse square of the distance between two charges. two like test charges (always positive) will repel each other with a force related to kq1q2/r^2, that is, the closer two like charges are to each other, a stronger repulsive force will be observed in an outward direction. replace one charge with a negative net charge, -q, and the force will be attractive. i understand why you would think this way, the behaviors are similar, attraction, but nothing is repelled by gravity. you cant have antigravity. you cant have negative mass (theoretically, at least). humans are not attracted to magnets because out net charge is for the most part neutral. you can be polarized by charged objects, and thus you will appear to be attractive/repulsive... but in the whole picture, you have a 0 net charge. just because we contain metal does not mean we exhibit behaviors related to magnetism.
illadelphin is dead on there. gravity acts on all mass similarly. magnetism works on mass, but the effect is dependent upon the relative charges of the masses
Dead on. No, they are not the same. They do appear similar at first, however, and understanding one can help you understand the other in a limited way. Gravity is a really funky force and produces some really fascinating phenomenon, in that it acts on all objects within a given defined space equally relative to their location within that space. You can magneticly shield something, using lead or other materials. But there appears to be no shielding from gravity.
Gravity has interesting effects on spacetime which are not observed with electromagnetic fields. Additionally, would this not suggest that prestellar clouds of neutral hydrogen should never coalesce into stars? Gravity explains stars. By your hypothesis these clouds would need to be seeded with ferrous metals to coalesce. But ferrous metals didn't exist before the first stars. So what pulled the clouds together in the first place? Also, I'm doubtful that trace amounts of ferrous metals would be able to account for the consistency of the gravitational field. Gravitation causes a uniform acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2 for any object on the surface of the Earth. But less-ferrous objects don't stick to magnets as strongly as more-ferrous objects - which suggests that the less metallic something is, the less strongly it should be pulled to the Earth. These are my tired, burned-out-after-good-weed objections. There are certainly many more.
You are right, but I like to play devils advocate, so here it goes. What if that is because of the perspective that we see the two forces in? If, key word if, what I was saying were true, which it is not, we would be like a tiny metal particle on a magnet. What if we don't know of the repelling because we are too small and can not see it happening? What if the objects being repelled never get close enough to us to notice? Now, I know you're right, as I said I just like playing devils advocate and theorizing.
there will be an electric field no matter how far you are from a charge. i get what youre saying... if you were an infinite distance away then yes, you would feel no force.
Actually, muscle doesn't weigh more than fat. 1 pound of muscle still weighs as much as 1 pound of fat. The difference is that muscle is denser. The fibers from your muscle are very tight, especially during physical activity (not a consistent tension, but a continually changing tension). Your muscles generate power by constricting or tightening their fibers, making them even MORE dense [ density = (mass)/(volume) ]. If the mass remains at the same value, but the volume decreases, the density will become a higher value, making it MORE dense. This is the same reason fat floats and muscle sinks. Fatty tissue usually has a density lower than that of water, making it stay above or on top of the water. Muscle is more dense than water, and for that reason it will sink. Think of fat as cotton balls and muscle as steel. A piece of steel weighing 1 pound would look drastically smaller than a large bin of cotton balls that weigh 1 pound. As far as your other theory, I see others have covered the explanations quite well. The one point I might reinforce is that: In case you can't imagine a distance of this length, mathematicians have deemed lines on graphs that approach an infinite limit as undefined, because you cannot actually define the distance. If you take/have taken Calculus I, then you may remember this or you will learn it as you get to this stage in mathematics. - SwetnK
word, i did not feel like explaining the idea of the limit.. im sure most can grab the idea that, if x in some function (1/x) was approaching infinite, the value of the function would approach 0... if you put that into the idea of a charges electric field lines between another like charge, the closer they are (1/r^2 is a larger number in this case) their field lines will be much closer together, more dense, than if the charges were at a value approaching infinite, and thus 0/