zlacker

>>qqqqqu+(OP)
I don't know if this would be my "one question" if I could ask the most brilliant minds in science, but something that always bothered me:

When I took physics they basically said "at first scientists were disturbed by the fact that magnets imply that two objects are interacting without any physical contact, but then Faraday came along and said 'the magnets are actually connected by invisible magnetic field lines' and that resolved everything."

How does saying "but what if there's invisible lines connecting them" resolve anything? To be clear, I'm not objecting to any of the actual electromagnetic laws or using field lines to visualize magnetic fields. It's just that I don't get how invoking invisible lines actually explains anything about how objects are able to react without physical contact.

(Also, it is not lost on me I that this question boils down to "fraking magnets, how do they work?")

>>harima+Mz
It's local (propagates continuously through space, no faster than the speed of light) and if you want you can view it as mediated by particles (photons), although just viewing it as the EM field is fine too (and certainly no less local). So is gravity, which was spooky action at a distance for even longer, once you invent GR.