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Originally Posted by Xaccers
Ah but how do you know that the strong or weak nuclear forces don't play a greater role?
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Unfortunately I don't have the book to hand. It was called
THE COLLAPSING UNIVERSE by Isaac Asimov (one of his non-fictional books)
In it he says something like:
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"Gravitation, then, is by far the weakest of the four forces. Even the so-called weak force is 10,000 trillion trillion times as strong as gravitation."
"It is no wonder, then, that nuclear physicists, when studying the behavior of subatomic particles, take into account the nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the weak force but totally ignore gravitation. Gravitation is so weak that it simply never influences the course of events within atoms and atomic nuclei by a measurable amount."
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But in this case we're not looking at particles, but masses something like 3x our Sun, at which point gravity becomes the overwhelming force nonetheless.
I suggest that anyone who want to understand more on this subject find a copy of Asimov's book, because despite being quite old, it's probably one of the most accesible sources on this subject for those who haven't studied much physics since leaving education.