On Tue, 19 Jul 2016 10:36 am, Rustom Mody wrote: > I recollect — school physics textbook so sorry no link — > that in the Newton gravitation law > f = -GMm/r² > > there was a discussion about the exponent of r ie 2 > And that to some 6 decimal places it had been verified that it was > actually 2.000002
Because gravitational forces are so weak, it is very difficult to experimentally distinguish (say) an exponent of 1.999999 from 2.000002 from 2 exactly. Most physicists would say that an experimental result of 2.000002 is pretty good confirmation that the theoretical power of 2 is correct. Only a very few would think that the experiment was evidence that both Newtonian and Einsteinian gravitational theory is incorrect. (Newton, for obvious reasons; but also general relativity, since Newton's law can be derived from the "low mass/large distance" case of general relativity.) But it's an interesting hypothetical: what if the power wasn't 2 exactly? -- Steven “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
