Alle Dinge sind Gift, und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dass ein Ding kein Gift ist.
All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.
Paracelsus, 1538
The word for poison in German is Gift?!
The word has been used as a euphemism for “poison” since Old High German, a semantic loan from Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “gift; dose of medicine”). The original meaning “gift” has disappeared in contemporary Standard German, but remains in some compounds (see Mitgift). Compare also Dutch gift (“gift”) alongside gif (“poison”).
I’d argue against that. For one thing it is impossible to imagine a situation where there is no change in the gravitational gradient across your body over time. Your orbiting a black hole situation is a perfect example of a situation where the gradient alone would tear you apart. The conditions you’ve specified are tautological. There’s no way to maintain a zero gravitational gradient while also simultaneously having extremely high gravitational field. The two are mutually exclusive in any conceivable scenario.
It’s like saying a human being in a hypersonic wind stream won’t necessarily hurt you, burn you alive and rip you to pieces (not necessarily in that order) as long as there is no turbulence and you have a sufficient boundary layer – but you’re a non-aerodynamic human body in a hypersonic wind stream, so of course there will be turbulence and the boundary layer will not protect you at all, you’re going to die, basically instantly.
Does the change in gravity gradient across your body kill you right now? No? You are currently orbiting the supermassive black hole in the center of the milky way.
It was implied by “accretion disc” and by the fact that we’re talking about gravitational gradients at all that we’re talking about a close orbit. Gravitational strength gets smaller with distance according to the inverse square law, so by the time you’re a few light years out from the galactic core the gravitational gradient is already extremely insignificant.
If the gravity were strong enough and the source close enough then the tidal force would absolutely be strong enough to simultaneously crush you and rip you apart. The same effect gives rise to tides on this planet, hence the name.
I studied Relativity at university as part of combined Physics/Maths degree, but please feel free to continue entertaining us with your popular magazine-based learnings.
I think General Relativity is based on the idea that a frame of reference that’s in freefall is equivalent to one that in a gravity free region of space (at least that was one of Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments that led him to his theory of GR).
Having said that, in reality a sufficiently strong gravitational field will cause a tidal effect, which will crush you along one axis and pull you apart along another.
the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass, and Albert Einstein’s observation that the gravitational “force” as experienced locally while standing on a massive body (such as the Earth) is the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in a non-inertial (accelerated) frame of reference.
Wouldn’t a high enough force cause the gradient of gravity to differ?
Unless I misunderstood how that works. I’m picturing a downed powerline that causes large differences in voltage across the ground, which is why you are supposed to shuffle instead of taking a normal step. Would a high enough gravity cause a harmful gradient across the length of a human body?
Like if you were free falling into a black hole, the gravity forces would rip you to shreds long before you ever actually impacted anything because the difference in the force of gravity on the parts of your body that are closer to the black hole and the parts of your body that are farther away are enough to shred you like lettuce.
I thought about this a bit and concluded that it only applies to physical materials and forces.
For example: There certainly are lethal ideas, but most of them are not, and much like bosons they can overlap, so filling a person with multiple copies of the same (benign) thought has a diminishing effect.
But yeah, anything physical has a lethal concentration.
Just about anything including water or salt
Not just about. Literally everything is lethal at a high enough concentration.
LD50’s are fun!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
The word for poison in German is Gift?!
Well that’s dumb.
“gift” means both “poison” and “married” in swedish. languages are fun :)
Some people would not see a difference in those words, so why not use the same and decide on context xD
The first part of the question asks what is safe in small amounts
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I’d argue against that. For one thing it is impossible to imagine a situation where there is no change in the gravitational gradient across your body over time. Your orbiting a black hole situation is a perfect example of a situation where the gradient alone would tear you apart. The conditions you’ve specified are tautological. There’s no way to maintain a zero gravitational gradient while also simultaneously having extremely high gravitational field. The two are mutually exclusive in any conceivable scenario.
It’s like saying a human being in a hypersonic wind stream won’t necessarily hurt you, burn you alive and rip you to pieces (not necessarily in that order) as long as there is no turbulence and you have a sufficient boundary layer – but you’re a non-aerodynamic human body in a hypersonic wind stream, so of course there will be turbulence and the boundary layer will not protect you at all, you’re going to die, basically instantly.
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It was implied by “accretion disc” and by the fact that we’re talking about gravitational gradients at all that we’re talking about a close orbit. Gravitational strength gets smaller with distance according to the inverse square law, so by the time you’re a few light years out from the galactic core the gravitational gradient is already extremely insignificant.
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If the gravity were strong enough and the source close enough then the tidal force would absolutely be strong enough to simultaneously crush you and rip you apart. The same effect gives rise to tides on this planet, hence the name.
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I studied Relativity at university as part of combined Physics/Maths degree, but please feel free to continue entertaining us with your popular magazine-based learnings.
You argue that it isn’t, and then provide several examples where it is.
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Boy that’s a lot of words for “lol, you’re right. My mistake.”
I think General Relativity is based on the idea that a frame of reference that’s in freefall is equivalent to one that in a gravity free region of space (at least that was one of Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments that led him to his theory of GR).
Having said that, in reality a sufficiently strong gravitational field will cause a tidal effect, which will crush you along one axis and pull you apart along another.
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I was thinking of the Equivalence Principle:
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Wouldn’t a high enough force cause the gradient of gravity to differ?
Unless I misunderstood how that works. I’m picturing a downed powerline that causes large differences in voltage across the ground, which is why you are supposed to shuffle instead of taking a normal step. Would a high enough gravity cause a harmful gradient across the length of a human body?
The term spaghettification comes into mind.
Like if you were free falling into a black hole, the gravity forces would rip you to shreds long before you ever actually impacted anything because the difference in the force of gravity on the parts of your body that are closer to the black hole and the parts of your body that are farther away are enough to shred you like lettuce.
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Makes sense, thank you :)
I thought about this a bit and concluded that it only applies to physical materials and forces.
For example: There certainly are lethal ideas, but most of them are not, and much like bosons they can overlap, so filling a person with multiple copies of the same (benign) thought has a diminishing effect.
But yeah, anything physical has a lethal concentration.
I love nerds.