Physics question (magnetism)

Everything (and I do mean everything) in the universe has motion relative to some other object, and as such can be considered to have kinetic energy. And all objects have at least gravitational potential energy, bound up as mass seperated by distance. On the atomic level, even an electron bound at the ground state has energy, in reference to the vacuum energy of “empty” space as can be seen in the Casimir effect.

Stranger

And everything other than a black hole has gravitational potential energy with respect to itself, even, without needing any other object in the Universe. If you squeezed the Earth down to a smaller size, it’d have less gravitational energy than it does now (of course, it would presumably have elastic potential energy instead, or it would have already shrunk). Likewise the Sun, or the Galaxy, or anything else. The only reason this doesn’t apply to a black hole is that a black hole can’t be squeezed any further.

Damn, I was gonna make my ex-wife pay up, too. :frowning: :stuck_out_tongue: