@maninayton - Does Gravity Suck Or Does Time?
For thousands of years, humans have sought to explain the mysterious force that makes objects fall to the ground instead of float away.
There have been - and still are - many theories that try to explain gravity. A recent BBC television program called "Gravity and Me - The Force that Shapes Our Lives" explored the quest to explain what gravity is. I've posted the link below in the sources section of this post.
One of the theories touched upon in the program, and explained later in this post, totally boggled my mind.
Past Theories For Gravity
As mentioned above, humankind has tried for centuries to explain gravity.
In the 4th century BC Aristotle put forward the theory that heavy matter, such as earth or rock, moved down towards the Earth because that if where it came from. Lighter matter such as air or fire moved upwards towards the moon because that is where they came from.
(Image by xedos4 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
This view held - in the West at least - until the 16th century when Galileo started experiments on falling objects and determined the formula for calculating the distance an object will fall in a certain time.
In 1687 Sir Issac Newton published his groundbreaking book, Principia Mathematica, in which he proposed the law of universal gravitation. This stated that the attraction of two bodies was dependent on their mass and the distance between them.
In 1915 Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity in which matter, such as our sun, warps space and time which in turn dictates how matter moves.
Time May Play A Part
(Image by vvadyab at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
A segment of the BBC program featured a talk with the American theoretical physicist, Kip Thorne.
In the talk Thorne mentioned that time slows down the closer you get to a mass.
It is this difference in the flow of time that creates the force we know as gravity.
Objects fall towards the point where time is slower!
Time for someone on Earth is slower by 1 second over 100 years compared to a person in a high altitude plane.
This may seem trivial but apparently it is precisely enough to account for the gravity we have on Earth.
Einsteins Law of Time Warps states:-
“Things like to live where they age the
most slowly, and gravity pulls them there”
Black holes have such a huge mass (some are a billion times heavier than our Sun) that time slows down to almost nothing.
Because of the Law of Time Warps, this slowing down of time creates the tremendous gravity that these black holes have.
At the very heart of these black holes time stops and gravity becomes infinite.
Research Continues
Research continues into gravity and huge breakthroughs are being made.
In February 2016, the detection of gravitational waves was announced. These waves are the ripples caused in spacetime by such things as black hole collisions.
This opens up a whole new field of study which may lead to us eventually understanding gravity.
Who knows? One day we may end up with that science fiction staple, an anti-gravity device!
Sources For This Post
Images.
All images have been attributed within the post.
External Links
Information for this post came from the following external websites:-
PDF file on blackholes - Blackholes by Thorne and Starmus
The BBC 4 program 'Gravity and Me The Force that Shapes Our Lives' can be viewed on Youtube here.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and would consider following me (I will reciprocate).
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Until next time - take care of yourselves.
How interesting your post! My mind is maddened by themes like that of his post, the modification of time and space of black holes, but above all by the advances in the quantum physics!
Greetings from the Andes!
We live in exciting times as far as new discoveries in science are concerned. When you look at the wonderful things out there in the universe it is truly mind blowing.
Really the science and the discoveries are impressive especially in quantum physics and the notions of space and time. Greeting