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Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by greglindahl on Thursday July 28, 2016 @02:55PM (#12182313)
In many scientific disciplines, gravity waves are called "g waves" to prevent confusion with actual gravity. Alas, that doesn't help when Googling.

BTW, gravity is not incredibly weak. It's what makes Jupiter warm, and powers brown dwarf stars.

Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by cobbzilla on Thursday July 28, 2016 @03:38PM (#12182600)
When people say gravity is weak, they usually mean "relative to other forces of nature"

Put a small magnet above a paperclip. When the magnet is close enough, the paperclip will jump up and stick to it.

At that moment, the magnetic force of the magnet pulling the paperclip upwards is larger than the gravitational force of THE ENTIRE EARTH pulling it downwards.

Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by kqr on Thursday July 28, 2016 @05:30PM (#12183331)
Is gravity as a force weak, or are we just used to materials where the electrical charge is disproportionate to its mass?

Maybe the kilogram is just a tiny unit compared to the coulomb, and if that relationship was normalised the forces would appear abouh equal.

All tongue in cheek, of course. They're just different ways of saying the same thing. In our collective experience with our regular materials, magnetic forces, when present, tend to be stronger at short distances than gravitational forces.

Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by rlpb on Thursday July 28, 2016 @08:12PM (#12184219)
I suppose it's a scale thing. At a small scale, including human scale, gravity is weak and the other forces are strong. At a large scale, the other forces don't really exist at all, and so it is gravity that is strong.
Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by gpderetta on Thursday July 28, 2016 @06:21PM (#12183643)
The coupling constants of the various fields are unitless and the gravity coupling constant is order of magnitude smaller than the others.
Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by kqr on Friday July 29, 2016 @01:45PM (#12188481)
That is cool information. Where can I read more about that?
Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by greglindahl on Thursday July 28, 2016 @06:25PM (#12183659)
Oh, I totally get the usual reason. But as an astronomer, when I look up at the night sky, I think about how all that glowing stuff was assembled by gravity, with magnetism playing a supporting role by driving the Balbus-Hawley instability in accretion disks[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetorotational_instability

Re:Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source by cobbzilla on Thursday July 28, 2016 @07:33PM (#12183991)
I agree, gravity does create its most beautiful artwork at the cosmic scale.