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COVID-19 in terms of physics

Events take place such that the hackneyed word "unprecedented" finds its original meaning. This has never happened without any “and here again.” The first analogy from a favorite science that asks for is a phase transition. H 2O in the form of liquid or ice at the same temperature of 0 degrees Celsius. How to explain that with outwardly equal, well, or similar manifestations of the epidemic with the two previous ones (SARS and bird flu), we have a worldwide coverage of the disease and a completely different quality of response to the situation? We will not, of course, make speculative comparisons of the number of coronavirus deaths and the number of people killed in traffic accidents or poisoned by low-quality alcohol, as the journalistic fraternity likes to do, its anti-alarmist part. If we compare this with a similar one, that is, with the two indicated epidemics and more broadly with annual seasonal flu waves that also take a lot of lives, the question arises - what parameter has changed so significantly that we have such a comprehensive pandemic and such an unprecedented response to hitherto familiar circumstances?

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The pandemic COVID-19, a potentially severe acute respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (2019-nCoV), has officially been announced in the world. There is a lot of information on Habré on this topic - always remember that it can be both reliable / useful, and vice versa.

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3 explanations come to mind.

The first explanation is humanistic.

The degree of humanity has finally reached the point where the numbers of those who died from similar diseases have already ceased to be considered the norm and simply statistics - and humanity, and in almost all countries, regardless of internal structure, reacts so unprecedentedly, ignoring economic losses and subsequent possible social upheaval. This, of course, cannot but rejoice, especially if we recall all the horrors of the 20th century.

The second explanation is also humanistic.

Only the lazy did not repeat about the next wave of the crisis, which simply could not fail to happen due to the contradictions accumulated in the world, the unleashed trade wars, inflated market bubbles and all that. But the way out of this situation was found truly stunning - instead of wetting each other, countries do the bloodletting of their own economies, simultaneously solving problems with imbalances within and in relations with the outside world, and releasing other negative steam from the overheated boiler. As if instead of a duel, two rivals inflicted some harm on their own (I would like to believe that they were not fatal), and would have left the world. This opinion, by the way, was also heard from the remarkable Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik, who called what was happening a replacement for World War III. And again, the main victims today are the United States and China,whose confrontation in the last couple of years has been the main source of destabilization in the world.

The third explanation is physical.

The role of such a parameter, which exceeded a certain threshold value, can be played by the increased “connectedness” of mankind. Here is a direct analogy with atomic physics and a chain reaction. As soon as a neutron emitted from an atomic nucleus is capable of "breaking up" more than one nucleus in the neighborhood, we have the beginning of an avalanche-like process ending in a nuclear explosion. This “connectivity” can be assessed by the number of flights operated in the world. 20 years ago, doing one of the first Internet ticket offices in Runet, I was amazed to stumble upon the number of daily flights in Europe - there were already 30,000 already then. And this is even before the era of low-fires and the removal of borders between the countries of the European Union. Airplanes in Europe play the role of commuter trains, and surprise anyone with tickets at the price of 10-15 euros.In recent years, the popularity of recreation in the east has also increased significantly, here is one of the fun maps of the Earth - the number of flights per day by region is shown, and it is Asia that prevails in it



( Source here )

And this is a growth graph of the number of passengers transported by aviation per year, the order of numbers is already being selected for the entire number of people on planet Earth. Asia is in the lead.



( Source here )

You can draw more distant parallels, which, it seems to me, still have the right to exist. Consider ... 2 theories of gravity, Newton and Einstein. The first is built around one formula, known to us from Grade 7, Newton's law of gravity:

F=G∗M1∗M2R2


Despite the apparent simplicity of the formula, it has some hidden statement - namely, that the propagation velocity of the gravitational interaction is infinite. Indeed, we mean by the first mass our planet, and by the second, for example, the Sun, any change in the distance between them will instantly affect the gravitational force acting on the Earth. But we know that this is not so! No interactions can propagate faster than the speed of light, and we will feel any change in the position of the Sun only after eight minutes with a third. Further - more: gravitational (and light) waves from the nearest star travel in space for 4 years, from the center of our Milky Way galaxy - 27 800 light years, two and a half million light years from the Andromeda galaxy, and so on. Part of the expanding universe is generally beyond the event horizon at 13.It’s not capable of exerting 8 billion light-years of light on us, we won’t even get a ray of light from there.

Einstein's general theory of relativity included the postulate of the finiteness of the speed of light. The consequences of this became clear quickly enough. Already in 1922, 6 years after the creation of the theory, the Soviet mathematician Alexander Fridman found non-stationary solutions of Einstein's equations, which described either an infinitely expanding or periodically collapsing Universe. This fact seemed astounding and distrusting, at least until the discovery of this expansion by Edwin Hubble in 1929. To "save the situation" Einstein added the famous "cosmological member", designed to stabilize the universe. However, it turned out that he does not help.

If you think about it, then Newton's cosmology, and indeed the Universe itself with such a law of gravity (and gravity, we can say, is the only long-range force, electromagnetic at large distances, does not count, since there are 2 types of charges that neutralize each other on average) simply cannot exist. The reason is precisely in “strong connection”, when any part affects any other, no matter how far it may be, and instantly, and in the fact that gravity is always an attractive force. The timeless existence of such a world would lead to the coalescence of its entire mass into one huge black hole. Only the finiteness of the speed of light and the expansion of the Universe save from this scenario.

If we transfer this analogy to society, then we have humanity in a state of exactly the same “strong connectedness” and universal interdependence, as in the Newtonian Universe. The connectivity that has arisen literally in the last decade is, first, in the ease of movement and removal of all kinds of barriers for various financial instruments, goods, services, and then in the free movement of huge masses of people. The first serious consequences of this last fact we now disentangle, before that there were only global economic crises, unpleasant, but not fatal.

What's next?

In the light of the above analogy, the future does not seem bright and beautiful at all. If the current pace of globalization continues, then at least in this strongly connected world, all of humanity will simultaneously suffer from all the diseases existing in it, there is no way to go. Similarly, the waves of the crisis that were born in any part of the world will overwhelm it all without any discounts on national differences.

Another way out of the situation could be interstellar (well, so far, interplanetary) expansion.

Elon Musk, take me to Mars!

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