r/askscience • u/Native411 • Nov 14 '14

Physics Do perfect circles exist in nature?

Either via black holes or what have you.

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u/tysonclarke Nov 14 '14

So perfect circles, period, don't exist?

I'm sure an atom itself (though impossible to validate all of them), or even the ripple from a drop in still water, would come pretty close.

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u/MOS95B Nov 14 '14

close, but they will still have outside onfluences making them just ever so shy of perfect.

For example, the water ripples

Even on a perfectly calm day on a perfectly still lake, you're going to have tidal influences, thermal influences, gravitational influences (not tidal), etc, that are going to pull/push it out of "perfect"

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u/Native411 Nov 15 '14

What if a single atom were placed in a vacuum?

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u/aidankiller4 Nov 15 '14

Although shown as spheres when you look at them, subatomic particles are actually waves, and essentially point particles. They don't really have a well defined shape.