The King of the Coffee Machine and the Newtons Law of G!

At the Coffee Machine yesterday afternoon, two colleagues were discussing a recent astronomical phenomenon, which had found mention in the morning’s newspaper. I couldn’t help but “listen in”. Talk veered towards the stars, and these people being engineers, subsequently, to the Newton’s Law of Gravitation.

They remarked, that the universe was maintaining its stability because of the equilibrium, which existed between the various forces of attraction at work. TRUE

If the forces changed, bodies would fall into each other. PARTIALLY TRUE.

At this point, I decided to interject and make myself part of the discussion, albeit uninvited.
I pointed out that if the forces increase, the smaller body would in fact ‘Spiral’ into the larger one, as opposed to simply ‘fall in’. And if the forces increase, the force by which other bodies (say other solar systems/stars) attract bodies within our Solar system, will dominate. So what we will have are, elements of our solar system, our planets our asteroids moving towards other Solar systems.

At this point, they protested, but weakly. But yet, we ended up screaming “Bets! Bets!”

Back home, last evening, I dug out my Physics text from college, and read up the bit on Quantum Mechanics.

And yes I have won!
I haven’t forgotten all my Quantum Mechanics and specifically the Newtons Law of G, and this fact alone will enable me to lord over Coffee Machine Talk, for at least a week.

I can almost hear a friend of mine say “Small pleasures of a small man”, like she usually does.

Cheers!