We don’t know how the four fundamental forces of nature are communicated. We explain the actions at a distance they give rise to by defining new words. We might as well just use the word “magic”.
We may like to think of ourselves as being very modern, very scientific, very rational without having – or needing – any recourse to mystical powers. Yet there is much where we don’t know what we don’t know. We use the forces of gravitation and magnetism and can even calculate their magnitude but are no closer to knowing why they exist and how they are communicated. We have theories as to why they exist and how they work but these theories require that we define new, abstract/imaginary concepts of space-time and curvature of space. Gravitation fields and electromagnetic fields cause motion at a distance but where we don’t know how the forces bringing about such motion are communicated. We have no idea why gravity fields apparently propagate at (or, some say, greater than) the speed of light. We invent particles with magical properties but without any real understanding why such magical properties may exist. But our invocation of curvature in space or virtual photons or up-quarks or down-quarks is no different to the ancients invoking magic and communicated through the aether. The rubber sheet analogy for curved spacetime is flawed in that it only works because gravity magic already exists and keeps the bodies attached to the top of the stretched rubber sheet.
Wherever we have forces acting at a distance we can just as well use the word “magic” instead of any of the other words we imagine. Inventing a massless graviton is merely invoking magic. We could just as well refer to gravitation as attraction magic and electromagnetic interaction as electromagic. And all the various magics are just natural.
For example, here is the Wikipedia entry for Gravitation where the words gravitation, gravity and other fundamental forces have been replaced by “magic” or “magical forces”.
Attraction magic is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. Magical attraction gives weight to physical objects and causes them to fall toward the ground when dropped.
In modern physics, attraction magic is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Einstein) which describes attraction magic as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime. For most situations magical attraction is well approximated by Newton’s law of universal attraction magic, which postulates that the magical attraction force of two bodies of mass is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
In pursuit of a theory of everything, the merging of general relativity and quantum mechanics (or quantum field theory) into a more general theory of quantum magical attraction has become an area of active research. It is hypothesised that the magical attraction force is mediated by a massless spin-2 particle called the graviton, and that magical attraction would have separated from the electromagic force during the grand unification epoch.
Magical attraction is the weakest of the four fundamental magic forces of nature. The attraction magical force is approximately 10−38 times the strength of the strong magic force (i.e., magical attraction is 38 orders of magnitude weaker), 10−36 times the strength of the electromagical force, and 10−29 times the strength of the weak magic force. As a consequence, magical attraction has a negligible influence on the behavior of sub-atomic particles, and plays no role in determining the internal properties of everyday matter. On the other hand, magical attraction is the dominant force at the macroscopic scale, that is the cause of the formation, shape, and trajectory (orbit) of astronomical bodies, including those of asteroids, comets, planets, stars, and galaxies. It is responsible for causing the Earth and the other planets to orbit the Sun; for causing the Moon to orbit the Earth; for the formation of tides; for natural convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a density gradient and magical attraction; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; for solar system, galaxy, stellar formation and evolution; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth and throughout the universe. This is the case for several reasons: magical attraction is the only force acting on all particles with mass; it has an infinite range; it is always attractive and never repulsive; and it cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against. Even though electromagic is far stronger than magical attraction, electromagic is not relevant to astronomical objects, since such bodies have an equal number of protons and electrons that cancel out (i.e., a net electromagic charge of zero).
Sounds fine and sufficiently unintelligible/magical to me.
Physics still contains a lot of magic.
The k2p blog 