Gravity (The I never really thought about that post)

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GTP_Royalton
Just take a moment, and look around you. Everything is still. Why? Gravity.

I was at work about 30 days ago when i had a revelation. Gravity.

All my life, I had never really stopped and noticed it. I lived with it everyday, used it to my advantage, and paid it no mind. Until 30 days ago.

I was sitting at my desk when I noticed the mail. It was just sitting there. Just - sitting there. No movement. Nill. Yada. Zero. Zilch.

Then I felt my butt. It felt glued to the chair. Later on I stand and my feet feel glued to the floor. Now I left up a piece of mail, just about 3 inches. I release it and it falls down and is stuck to the desk. Like something was pulling it down. I repeat this 5 times. I am very amused at the results.

Then I pick up a piece of mail again. My arm felt the mail had "weight"' Why do I feel weght? I refresh my memory.

All matter weighs the same in space, or does it? I'm sure it does. Put me and a car in space and a child could pick both of us up with ease. But why does this all change on Earth? Gravity

Mass is what gives objectS their 'weight'. How so? Well, the more mass you have, the more gravity has to pull on to.

Now, some 30 days later, I like to call gravity Earth's glue. I think that is a good nickname. Look how it is gluing your behind to your chair. Look how your drink does not float off. Look how cars do not float off but are glued to the road.

How would you like it if what went up had a 50/50 chance of coming down? How would you like it if everytime you jumped you didnt know when/where you were going to land?

Also, press your hand against something. Is the pressure you feeling your hand pressing the object or the object pressing back? The answer will surprise you.

The whole point of this is to respect gravity, one of Earth's perfect features that benefit us and all life.

So if you think us human brotherhood otherlooks something big everyday or you really appreciate something about life that others overlook or dont know about post it here! Example: You dont know how much you use your thumb until you lose it! etc
 
Gravity is so weak that it doesn't deserve my respect. Even my 2 month old niece can overcome gravity by lifting her hand.

GRAVITY IS WEAK!!!!!!111

I want to live a day without gravity. That would be cool.
 
I want to be dead. Not many people stop and think about what it would be like to be dead. So many people are afraid of not existing....I find it to be rather intriguing. I am under the assumption that is will be most like existance before you were born.
 
This Gravity makes me smell purtty...
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There must be some way of construing the fact that all masses create a gravitational field into a pickup line...

"You gravitational field is attracting me," or something to that effect...
 
Klostrophobic
GRAVITY IS WEAK!!!!!!111
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Well, it is the weakest of the four forces (by a long long long shot). Good thing it can act over long distances!

I want to live a day without gravity. That would be cool.
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Good luck getting rid of bodily wastes. Of course, good luck living too – The Earth would go ka-bloomy, as well as all of us.
 
Sage
Good luck getting rid of bodily wastes. Of course, good luck living too – The Earth would go ka-bloomy, as well as all of us.
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How would we go... ...Ka-Bloomy?
 
Would earth go kabloomy? Or would we just lose our atmosphere? Or would the core go solid and expand...therefore making the earth go boom? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN!?

Edit - My rocket scientist friend says we all lose atmostphere and go pop. Maybe core go boom too...doesnt much matter cuz we'd all be dead by then.
 
Well, gravity is what physically holds the Earth together (I imagine electromagnetic forces might do so a bit too, but I doubt enough to hold the Earth together, since it's such a short-range force). The Earth, and all planets/stars/cosmic bodies wouldn't have been created in the first place without gravity... there'd be little tiny clumps of dirt at best (AFAIK, the three non-gravity forces don't have cumulative effects, which is why they only make a difference at the atomic level). I could be wrong, but that's what I understand of it all – yay for Stephen Hawking!
 
Sage
Well, gravity is what physically holds the Earth together (I imagine electromagnetic forces might do so a bit too, but I doubt enough to hold the Earth together, since it's such a short-range force).
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The Magnetosphere may not do much in the actual holding together of the Earth, but it does quite a bit, considering we'd all be toasted by ionized plasma from the sun if it weren't repelled by the magnetosphere...
AFAIK
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I thought that said AFLAK, for a second.
 
Firebird
There must be some way of construing the fact that all masses create a gravitational field into a pickup line...

"You gravitational field is attracting me," or something to that effect...
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Since Gravity gets stonger as the mass grows larger, I am afraid that pick up line would only really work on a fat chick.

Not to discourage you, I mean, if thats what your into.
 
Gravity doesn't "benefit" life. That's like saying water benefits fish, as if life is only better with gravity than it is without it. There would be no life without gravity.
 
And in one theory, gravity is time being bent... What if time didn't exist... What the hell what happen?
 
And in one theory, gravity is time being bent... What if time didn't exist... What the hell what happen?
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Gravity bends space - which contains the dimension of time. Hence the term 'space-time'.

If time didnt exist, the universe wouldnt exist. That is why the inside of a black hole is theory and speculation. Time ceases to exist within a black hole.
 
Time doesn't exist.
Time is a human institution to illustrate progression through an event.

I read A Brief History of Time as well.
Kind of neat.
 
Bull**** time doesn't exist. Our abstract perception of time doesn't exist. None of our perceptions truly exist, because they are human abstractions of a concrete object. That doesn't mean that they don't have a physical presence.
 
Time doesn't pass. You pass.

Time doesn't exist.
Time is a human institution to illustrate progression through an event.
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I agree with this.

Before the creation of the Universe I'm sure 'time' wasnt even thought of. But when things started happening I believe this was the first concept of time, something to order events in.

I'll try to explain how I see it. Everytime you blink your eye you may say well the last time I blinked eye was 10 seconds ago. But in reality you are always in the present. You are never in the past. As soon as anything changes the change is gone forever, and you stay in the present. So the phrase that you pass, not time.
 
Mike Rotch
Gravity bends space - which contains the dimension of time. Hence the term 'space-time'.

If time didnt exist, the universe wouldnt exist. That is why the inside of a black hole is theory and speculation. Time ceases to exist within a black hole.
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Black holes don't have an inside. They are small "planets". Their gravity is so big that it doesn't allow light to leave the planet surface. Therefore they're black and look like holes.



I've been thinking. Gravity is earth's (or any other planets) mass pulling our mass toward it. That makes sci-fi style space travelling completely unpossible. If we found a planet with huge mass, we couldn't go there because we would be crushed by it's gravity (or the pressure, but that's another matter).
 
that would be cool if there was gravity rooms. (is there? :dunce: ) a couple times in there and you'd be strong as hell, not to mention your heart could fail, and you'd piss like a firehose, and you **** bricks too... i wonder if it would be physically possible to hold it?

hmm....whatever.
 
Joey
Time doesn't exist.
Time is a human institution to illustrate progression through an event.
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Earth
Time doesn't pass. You pass.
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This is entirely wrong (as Tim noted, a little less graciously). Time is a dimension, just as are the other three known dimensions, and it is in fact a "thing"... there was time even before any living thing could "experience" it. You guys are confusing the extensional "time" with measurements of time... we did indeed invent the measurement "10 seconds", which could just as easily be "245 kaboodjles", but time itself is not dependent on us or any other living thing. Time was literally created when the universe was, and will be destroyed if the universe collapses. Yes, time is relative to the observer, but that just means it changes, not that it doesn't exist in the first place.

MadHypello
I've been thinking. Gravity is earth's (or any other planets) mass pulling our mass toward it. That makes sci-fi style space travelling completely unpossible. If we found a planet with huge mass, we couldn't go there because we would be crushed by it's gravity (or the pressure, but that's another matter).
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How does that prevent us from visiting small planets though?

Black holes don't have an inside. They are small "planets". Their gravity is so big that it doesn't allow light to leave the planet surface. Therefore they're black and look like holes.
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"Planets"? It's a star that has collapsed to a singularity (a "point") of infinite density and space-time curvature, not a planet by any means... and not really much of a hole. Also, according to Hawking, they're not entirely black, because of light waves that linger at the event horizon (the "edge" of the black hole, per se), causing it to almost glow – though I'll freely admit I don't fully understand his explanation of this.
 
Sage you say time is thing, but I would appreciate if you would elaborate more on what exactly it is, and if it can be measured etc

People say particular events happened xx years ago but the reality is the event happened xx events ago, meaning it was events, not 'time' that passed .

What do you think was before the universe? There had to be something. The universe came about by, well non-religion people will say there was a single point that had all the mass of the universe, and religion people will say there was God but both agree that there was a before and the universe had a beginning. What was before it? What is 'outside' the universe? We know the universe is not infinite, because how can something with a beginning of a single point be infinite? Obviously there was something outside/around that point.
 
Sage
"Planets"? It's a star that has collapsed to a singularity (a "point") of infinite density and space-time curvature, not a planet by any means... and not really much of a hole. Also, according to Hawking, they're not entirely black, because of light waves that linger at the event horizon (the "edge" of the black hole, per se), causing it to almost glow – though I'll freely admit I don't fully understand his explanation of this.
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That's exactly what I meant. They're collapsed stars. I just didn't know how to say that, at the moment. :guilty:
 
Earth
Sage you say time is thing, but I would appreciate if you would elaborate more on what exactly it is, and if it can be measured etc

People say particular events happened xx years ago but the reality is the event happened xx events ago, meaning it was events, not 'time' that passed .
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Time, space, and light are strongly interweaved. Are you familiar with the light cone? Basically, imagine two cones that are touching at their points (making an almost X shape). The theory is that the single point that they create is the present, the speed of light creates the "barriers" (the "shell" of the cones), the top cone is the future, the bottom cone is the past, and anything outside of the cones is unaffected by that point (they can be effected later on, if they happen to enter the light cones on their sides). Hawking's example is this: If the Sun suddenly stops glowing, for 8 minutes, we won't even know that it happened, because the Earth is outside of that point at which the Sun went out. However, after about 8 minutes, the Earth would enter the future cone of the Sun, and thus we would see what happened at that previous point. Within those 8 minutes, more has happened to the Sun, but because of our relative position to it, we have to enter its future light cone in order to receive the past (passed?) time.

As more proof that time isn't just something abstract that we perceive, it can actually be physically slowed down. For example, there was one experiment done where extremely accurate weather clocks were placed at the top and bottom of a water tower... the clock at the bottom ran slower than the one on top, because it was closer to the center of the Earth. Time travels slower near a massive object (and can be bent by said object), because light loses energy the farther up it travels in a gravitational field. Space and time are dynamic, and are directly affected by objects.

As for measuring time, it's indeed possible by all means, but it's all relative to the observer. Three different observers could have three different measurements for where and when an event took place, and all will be correct – there is no fixed absolute, although one can find out what another observer would see through some math.

What do you think was before the universe? There had to be something. The universe came about by, well non-religion people will say there was a single point that had all the mass of the universe, and religion people will say there was God but both agree that there was a before and the universe had a beginning. What was before it? What is 'outside' the universe? We know the universe is not infinite, because how can something with a beginning of a single point be infinite? Obviously there was something outside/around that point.
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I wouldn't have the first clue. The problem is that the singularity that existed right before the Big Bang was of infinite density and space-time curvature, which causes all of our currently known laws of physics to break down and be useless (the same problem occurs with black holes), and of course there's no "past" light cone. The same problem occurs with trying to predict what would happen after the collapse of the universe – it turns into a singularity, and there's no future light cone to work with. I kinda think we'd have a better chance of discovering the universal law of physics that defines the universe before we'd be able to tackle what happened/happens outside of the universe (which includes before/after its creation).
 
Sage
"Planets"? It's a star that has collapsed to a singularity (a "point") of infinite density and space-time curvature, not a planet by any means... and not really much of a hole. Also, according to Hawking, they're not entirely black, because of light waves that linger at the event horizon (the "edge" of the black hole, per se), causing it to almost glow – though I'll freely admit I don't fully understand his explanation of this.
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ha, n00b. (I see my name, though) You see, at any point in space, any particles can be created at any time. Since there are particles being created, matter and energy is being created. That violates the law of conservation of energy/matter, right? Well, that's not the whole story. When the particles are created, and anti-particle is created at the same instant with the same mass in anti-matter. The anti-particle has negative mass and cancels out the positive mass. These anti-particle, particle pairs are called virtual particles, since they really don't exist, in a sense. Once each are created, they have a destiny to be destroyed. They live an infintessimally short time.

Anyway, since these virtual particles are being created everywhere at every instant, we never know there their. They are affected by gravity and since balck holes are huge vats of gravity, one of the virtual particle pairs can have one of the particles sucked into the balck hole. Once one is pulled in, the other one cannot be destroyed by it's partner. So it becomes a real particle. In the case of photons, when one becomes real, it radiates from the vicinity of the black hole, depending on it's initial direction. This light reaches the observer, so we see the black hole. This information is from the chapter "Black Holes Ain't so Black" in A Brief History of Time, I believe. It might have been "The Universe in a Nutshell," though. I read these a while back, so I don't remember.

I really don't know how black holes evaporate, but I think it has to deal with this phemomena.

Sorry for any typos. An many of you may be presently aware, my typing skills suck.
 

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