Gravity, What is it?

short answer:- no one knows.
Long answer:- N-o-b-o-d-y k-n-o-w-s
Del

Everything with mass attracts everything else with mass.

From the free dictionary:

ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun

1.

gravitational attraction - (physics) the force of attraction between all masses in the universe; especially the attraction of the earth's mass for bodies near its surface; "the more remote the body the less the gravity"; "the gravitation between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them"; "gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love"--Albert Einsteingravitation, gravitational force, gravitynatural philosophy, physics - the science of matter and energy and their interactions; "his favorite subject was physics"attraction, attractive force - the force by which one object attracts anothersolar gravity - the gravity of the sun; "solar gravity creates extreme pressures and temperatures"

Undefined...just like dividing by zero.

Einstein worked on a unified field theory but never finished. Others have tried but been unsecessfull also. Some are working on it now and who knows...we may find out in our lifetimes or not.

Gravity is a Force, and in nature there are several forces. Strong and weak atomic forces, magnetic and gravitational forces. As for exactly how they all do what they do...undefined.

Start looking up theories, because while there are no proven definitions, there are many theories that will entertain you and intrigue your mind.

Drew

This is good stuff!

I have been working on a project, and with help here I have made a little progress. Pondering peter7lyg's question, I may have been working the wrong problem.

After a discussion here on CR4 regarding magnetism, I researched electromagnetism applications, particulary superconductivity, but have made no tangible progress. I am trying to turn my 1988 Ford Econoline van into a 'Chick Magnet' but nothing seems to be working! I removed the child safety seat, and that helped.

Perhaps the attractive force of gravity is the answer... I will consider further... maybe just load the van with a bunch of rocks... I dunno.

they need to be THICK HEAVY ROCKS as you need very dense material to be an attractive mass.

somthing thick and heavy like ME. i should be attractive to small massed objects

No i had better stop, theres bound to be some females on here.

" I am trying to turn my 1988 Ford Econoline van into a 'Chick Magnet' "

Perhaps you should research prestidigitation.

Just between us guys, a 'Chick' who is well versed and practiced in prestidigitation would be exactly the type I would hope to attract.

Unless... unless you mean... Oh, nooooo! No, no, no!

Have you tried the following?

A candy apple red paint with gold flake.

Alternatively, Rat Rod flat black with flame work.

Lake pipes.

A pair of fluffy dice hanging from the mirror.

A fully 'sic' prologic sound system

"Hello Kitty" seat covers

"Yosemite Sam" spare tyre cover

Centerline Pro mag wheels.

Tinted acrylic "bubble" luv heart windows on the rear flanks

A fox tail on the aerial

and piece de resistance, a "don't bother knockin if its rockin" bumper sticker .

Once as a child I was on a trip with my parents somewhere in Colorado. There was this little gift shop of sorts actually built on stilts out on the side of a mountain. The particularly strange thing about the place was that when you walked in the door, the gravitational vector seemed to change from vertical to lateral, pulling you out toward the open gorge. I've never understood this phenomeon and I can't even remember exactly where the place was. Unforgettable though! Anyway, I thought, while we're on the subject. Any ideas?

That's called the Lemming Effect.

The best answer I have found was in a book by written by Scott Adams (we all know him as the author of Dilbert comic strips). Put simply he said that gravity wasn't actually an attracting force at all, and that it was due to the fact that everything in the universe (including the universe itself) was expanding at a rapid and constant rate. When you are standing still you don't feel its effects because every object is expanding at the same rate, but when you jump in the air the expansion of the planet is faster than your vertical velocity so it catches up with you and you find yourself back on the ground again.

Scott's exact examples and description is better, but you get the point.

but if everything is expanding how come the planet earth is still the same size?

in fact all the planets. Nice though though.

It isn't, the theory goes that the planet is expanding at the same rate as everything else. Because everything else is expanding and moving at the same rate (to maintain correct distances in space) the expansion itself it is not visible.

Scott's theory was actually quite convincing.

Gravity does seem to be similar to magnetic. Do larger magnets exert more force on the little ones? I think so.

Gravity isn't related to the earth spinning is it? That means if the earth stops spinning, we won't fall off. And for that I am duly grateful.

It is a common misconception that astronauts in orbit are weightless because they have flown high enough to "escape" the Earth's gravity. In fact, at an altitude of 400 kilometres (250 miles), equivalent to a typical orbit of the Space Shuttle, gravity is still nearly 90% as strong as at the Earth's surface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_gravity

Written by Fraser Cain

Map of Earth's Gravity

If it wasn't for the Earth's gravity, we'd all float off into space. So don't panic when I tell you that you're constantly falling towards the Earth at an accelerating rate of 9.8 meters/second². Fortunately, you're also standing on the Earth, so that's keeping you from falling.

Gravity comes from mass. The more mass an object has, the more gravity it will exert on objects around it. The amount of gravity that you experience falls off quickly over distance. So, the force of gravity that you feel on the surface of the Earth is much different from what you would experience at the distance of the Moon, or further. 9.8 m/s2 is the gravity close to the surface.

You might be surprised to know that the force of gravity on Earth actually changes depending on where you're standing on it. The first reason is because the Earth is rotating. This rotation is trying to spin you off into space, but don't worry, this force isn't much. The gravity of Earth at the equator is 9.789 m/s², while the force of gravity at the poles is 9.832 m/s². In other words, you weigh more at the poles than you do at the equator because of this centripetal force.

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I used to be really good at multiple choice tests because I would usually be able to eliminate two of the possible answers based on their improbability or outright realization that they weren't the right answer.

So, here goes...

What is gravity is little more than the LACK of equalized forces coming from all directions?

I used to think it had to do with things spinning and orbiting but not after reading that whole paper and sleeping on it for a couple of days. Our moon was the one puzzle because it doesn't spin in relation to the Earth.

Suppose there actually exists a 'gravitron' particle, devoid of a resting mass, whose only characteristic is spin.

Normal particles without resting mass have spin, vibration and orbit themselves creating a 'center'. Or if they have only two of those characteristics, one of them is ~twice as much as the other one.

Probably why quarks can replicate themselves when you seperate them into two parts.

Pertubation comes when the longitudinal axis of the vibration moment spins out to the circumference of the orbit and for a very brief moment the vibration vector lines up parallel to the orbit and causes a wobble.

***********

Now about 'gravitrons', suppose they are massless 'particles' that only have spin which would make them hard to detect since they would not respond to magnetic fields or each other.

If objects in space, away from the blocking effects of a planet, were bombarded by gravitrons from every direction, billions of times per second they would become weightless.

If the mass of a planet were dense enough to absorb these gravitrons there would be an imbalance in impact of the gravitrons on an object sitting on the surface in the opposite direction from the planets surface.

The object would in effect be pushed to the surface of the planet, not pulled to it.

This would explain why the centrifigal force needed to keep something in orbit is necessary and works all the way around the planet but is affected when planets/moons/suns line up.

This would also account for the fact that gravity APPEARS to act spontaenously (minus the 20C time lag for 'gravitron's to clear out of the space between the an affected object and the heretofore assumed source of the gravity).

This would also account for the seemingly continuous 'fabric' of gravity. It really isn't a fabric, it is a multi-dimensioned medium, the fabri

A good analogy would be something with neutral buoyancy floating in fish tank equipped with a tube with a trap door centered beneath it coming from the bottom of the tank. When you opened the trap door on the tank, the supporting water would drain out eliminating the buoyancy effect and the object would drop out the tube.

So YES!, warp drive could be achieved to about 20C if you could put a dense source of gravitrons to the rear of your space ship and have a cone shaped force field out the front of the ship that would create a void of gravitrons directly in front of the ship, the same way super-cavitating torpedoes work like the VA-111 Shkval.

If you need to name this concept of gravity you have my permission to name it after me! :)

This would also explain whey the Universe is accelerating into the Void, nothing to slow it down and everything pushing it from behind.

Actually, the Earth just sucks.

nice one

I am very surprised that after this many posts, no one has cited general relativity for the explanation of gravity. Gravity is the warping of the fabric of space-time by mass. The Newtonian formulation is an approximation that works extremely well except when masses get very large, or objects are very dense, and finally Newton does not predict the bending of light due to gravitation. With Newton, an entity must have mass to be acted upon by gravity. With general relativity (Einstein), no mass is necessary.

The idea that gravity is due to the expanding universe (attributed to Scott Adams of Dilbert fame) fails to explain why gravity is higher on, say Jupiter, than here on Earth. Or, even closer to home, the difference between the Earth's and the Moon's gravity. Scott Adams no doubt cooked that up for its entertainment value. If he knew that educated engineers actually went for it, it would probably end up in one of his Dilbert strips - it sounds like the kind of thing that Dilbert and Wally do to confuse the pointy-haired boss.

emc_c

Scott Adams no doubt cooked that up for its entertainment value.

That is exactly what he did! It was still one of the best (non-standard) explanations I have seen, even if it had a number of theoretical holes it it.

no, there is nothing to give something the initial push to start it rolling downhill into the sink hole in the fabric.

So, gravity is the result of warpage of the space-time continuum. OK, that begs the question of exactly what is this space-time continuum we live in.

I mean from the ground up, there seems to be a lot of empty space. Yet from a higher perspective, it is obvious that we are on the surface of a large clump of mass in roughly the shape of sphere. Sounds like the perspective of a piece of dust on a droplet of water. Gravity (and at this level, surface tension also) is responsible for that spherical shape. Surely you've seen pictures of a blob of water in zero G. Even mercury droplets want to be spherical (unless there is a suitable surface on which it can establish a toe hold, like a piece of glass). I never quite resolved if surface tension wasn't in part due to gravity at an atomic level considering the distances.....

Anyway, we all know gravity is a function of mass and the warpage of space-time. Usually the space-time interaction requires some kind of motion. And we are all familiar with the additive or subtractive effects that acceleration has on us in an elevator. But even as we stand still there is motion throughout our atomic makeup that we take for granted.

We assume that the net effect of random alignment of the atoms in any mass to be oriented such a way that the angular momentum of each atom is canceled out by a balancing atom throughout that mass.

But I'm not sure anybody can really explain angular momentum even though we can experience the force that it exerts as in a bicycle wheel held horizontally and spun.

So, at an atomic level if the motion of some atom creates its own pocket of warped space-time and you try to add up the cumulative effect of each little bit of angular momentum then instead of canceling out those vectors of momentum, they radiate out from the mass in all directions decreasing with the square of the distance.

This seems to be at odds with conventional thinking because we still don't have a full understanding of our interaction with space-time. If we did, then we could potentially build ships that would be able to travel without the effects of inertia or acceleration inside the ship. We might even be able to synthesize gravity. Imagine the application possibility's of that device.

In any case, gravity is not the result of electromagnetic radiation but rather from the result of the motion of some mass, or a lot of mass. If it is due to the motion of electrons, then all you would have to do is to find some way to decrease their orbits around the nucleus, thereby speeding up the motion of all the electrons. But then it would get heavier and the resultant gravity would be in all directions unless the mass was perhaps a crystal that had similar orientation for most of its atoms.

It has also been proposed that gravity is instantaneous (i.e. faster than the speed of light). I could understand words like continuous, but I can't imagine how we could hope to measure something that was truly instantaneous.