Bonus!

On Gravity

When thinking about the force of gravity, it is tempting to think that it is a very strong force. After all, it seems to be quite dominant in our lives. Rockets struggle against it, it limits the feats of many athletes to fewer home runs, fewer field goals and fewer slam dunks. It is the force that in massive amounts can break the very fibers of spacetime with black holes.

However, this force is minuscule compared to the forces at work on an atomic scale. In an atom, there are neutrons and protons in the nucleus and electrons that surround the nucleus. The neutrons repel each other and yet are held together by strong nuclear forces.

If we existed at this scale, we would most likely not know about gravity. Gravity at this scale only accounts for about one ten thousand trillion trillion trillionths of the force you feel. That is 40 orders of magnitude.

It begs the question: what forces are out there that we cannot detect at our scale?