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Originally Posted by Kaptain K
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That's what I'm getting at, actually. The electromagnetic force is stronger than gravitation, but only over shorter distances. Nobody has any understanding as to why this is true.
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Not true!
1) The electromagnetic force is many orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. That is why an electromagnet can lift a steel bar against the gravitational pull of the entire Earth.
2) The range of the electromagnetic force is the same as that of gravity (infinite). The Earth is pulling from over 6000 kilometers away. The electromagnet is in contact (or very close to it) with the steel. The gravitational pull of the electromagnet on the steel is negligible and would be would be orders of magnitude less from 6000 kilometers away, but it would still be there (in the same ratio to its magnetic attraction). |
Good point - and bad wording on my part.
ops: Perhaps a better way of looking at it might be that we don't understand why electromagnetic effects don't dominate over large scales but gravity does. To me at least it seems like there's something odd that the weakest of the fundamental forces (if it is a force) controls the way things move throughout the universe while, to the best of my knowledge, the effects of the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force are not observed over galactic scales.