And who are you to decide whether he was needed? The point being he *is* in the novel and the author put him there, so it's not really on you to judge if he should be there or not. He is. And frankly, I'm saddened to see so many geeks scared by a little eccentricity and oddity in a book. If anything, I find Tom magnificent precisely because of the fact that he really seems out of place. His character really left me in awe and gave me gave me a lot of thinking material to go along with.
The graviton is still hypothetical as gravity hasn't quite been properly quantised yet. And yes, photons do exhibit a very miniscule gravitational influence on other objects; however, it is so minute that it is not notable for a single photon. The electron's energy (via mass) is far greater and hence their gravitational effect is greater too. Neutrinos also effect gravity and not much else (except the weak nuclear force), and this fact, in combination with their extremely low mass, makes them so hard to detect.
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And who are you to decide whether he was needed? The point being he *is* in the novel and the author put him there, so it's not really on you to judge if he should be there or not. He is. And frankly, I'm saddened to see so many geeks scared by a little eccentricity and oddity in a book. If anything, I find Tom magnificent precisely because of the fact that he really seems out of place. His character really left me in awe and gave me gave me a lot of thinking material to go along with.
Poppycock. Tolkien stated quite openly in his Letters that Eru never had a material avatar on Arda.
The graviton is still hypothetical as gravity hasn't quite been properly quantised yet. And yes, photons do exhibit a very miniscule gravitational influence on other objects; however, it is so minute that it is not notable for a single photon. The electron's energy (via mass) is far greater and hence their gravitational effect is greater too. Neutrinos also effect gravity and not much else (except the weak nuclear force), and this fact, in combination with their extremely low mass, makes them so hard to detect.
Interesting. It's also called 'Informatika' in Croatian.