The Expanse

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Reading the books for the first time. How unreasonable is my gripe about thrust "gravity"? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 days ago by ech@lemmy.ca to c/theexpanse@lemmy.world

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With the show being one of my favorites, I'm happy to say that I'm really enjoying the novels as well. That said, it keeps bugging me when the term "thrust gravity" is always used to describe something that's explicitly Newton's 3rd law - ie, not gravity. I'm probably not understanding something, but it bugs me to see a series that makes a point to be at least reasonably scientific to use a term that seems so wrong.

Side note: How come the third law missed out on natural feeling shorthand? 1st - inertia. 2nd - f=ma. 3rd - ???. Feels like something got overlooked there.

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[–] GiveOver@feddit.uk 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It feels like a natural term that might arise. It's not literally gravity but it feels like gravity so people call it gravity. In the same way we casually say "zero gravity" for situations where there is gravity but you can't feel it.

[–] ech@lemmy.ca -4 points 2 days ago

It'd make more sense of it was just in-universe jargon used in dialogue, but it's also used in narration, which doesn't feel like it fits with the rest of the scientific focus, at least not to me.