-
Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
-
Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:
Everything attracts everything. That is the concept of gravity as presented by Newton. In the case of Earth, it is so big with respect to us that we feel its pull rather than the planet feeling ours.
If you go to the moon, which is quite smaller, you do get a lesser pull and can jump like Super Man!
Finally, the Earth is also subject to the sun’s gravity pull and it keeps on ‘falling’ while going around the sun (which is what we call an orbit). Since there are also many other objects in our solar system and in the universe, that orbit is not a perfect circle around the sun, but rather an ellipse with one focus at the sun and one somewhere else.
-
-
Clara Nellist answered on 13 Mar 2014:
Thomas is right that gravity is the pull everything has on everything else. So you are pulling on the Earth a little just as it is pulling on you. But because the Earth is so much bigger than you are, it pulls you a lot more and we feel this as gravity. Did you know that because Jupiter is so huge, a person weighing 10 stone on Earth would weigh 27 stone there!
-
Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:
But the most interesting point to make is… nobody really knows!
Sure, we know there is gravity. We know very well how it works on a wide scale. But we don’t really know what makes it work or why it works! We have some excellent theories (Einstein discovered one) for planets and galaxies and everything ‘big’ that are very reliable. And we have some discoveries at the other end, for the very small, that the guys at CERN want to fit into this. But until we can reliably manipulate and experiment with gravity, we’ll never really know for sure…
So, come on younger scientists! There’s plenty for you to work through, and gravity is just one of these questions we don’t really have a satisfactory answer for, just yet. Maybe one of you can work it out and tell us!
Comments