The Pork Chop Solution: Pondering My Place in Space

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The discussion explores the metaphor of feeling like a drifting asteroid after consuming a large number of pork chops, leading to thoughts on gravity and personal existence. Participants debate the forces at play in the universe, particularly how gravity affects objects in space and the implications of being devoid of mass. They touch on Newtonian and General Relativity theories, noting that while Newtonian theory suggests no internal forces exist within a uniform mass, General Relativity complicates this understanding. The conversation also highlights the role of the universe's expansion rate and the cosmological constant in determining whether one would experience compressive or tidal forces. Overall, the thread delves into the intersection of personal reflection and complex astrophysical concepts.
Chronos
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I was BBQ-ing yesterday. I ate eight pork chops [they were small] and lapsed into a sated, torpid slumber. Suddenly, I was a lonely asteroid drifting in deep space, with nothing but diffuse filaments of primordial hydrogen and helium molecules to keep me company [I was recoil kicked out of my mother galaxy about 8 Gy ago.]. It suddenly occurred to me I was being gently pulled in all directions by the gravity of the near infinite number of massive bodies isotropically surrounding me in the universe. Were it not not for the attractive properties of my own feeble mass, I would be stretching... Any thoughts?
 
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I imagine 2 things would hold you together. The strength of your body and the very weak gravitational force created by your mass should each be sufficient to prevent the very weak cumulative tidal forces from pulling you apart.
 
Agreed, but what if I'm empty space devoid of any appreciable resistance to this force?
 
Chronos said:
Agreed, but what if I'm empty space devoid of any appreciable resistance to this force?
Good question, gravity gravitates, i guess the only thing keeping you from "imploding" is the hubble.
 
In Newtonian theory, there is no force anywyere inside a sphere of uniform matter. So you wouldn't be pulled apart.

In GR things get a lot more complicated, and the previous statement is not necessarily true. From some other threads, including one overly long thread about threads :-), you should only get pulled apart if the deceleration parameter q of the universe is less than zero, i.e. if the universal expansion is acclerating. (This happens only when there is a cosmological constant). Otherwise you will only experience compressive forces.

There isn't any good way of illustrating this without some nasty tensor algebra, though. If anyone wants to see the nasty tensor algebra, I can provde links where this has been previously discussed, and the numbers for our current universe (which does have a cosmological constant) have been calculated.
 

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