Gravity

The Universal Attraction

A child learning to ride a bicycle is in difficulty at slow speed. At slow speed, the Earth's gravity very much controls things and the danger of bike and child falling to the ground is good. At higher speeds the force of the Earth's gravity is overcome and the forward momentum of the bike (and child) produces a stable ride. The child and the bike form their own gravity, overwhelming the gravity of the Earth.

Our bodies are constructed to work in the gravitational field of the Earth. Our balance is regulated by the semi-circular canals in our inner ear and our antigravity muscles provide our locomotion. Higher green plants have a hormone—auxin—that orients them to the field of gravity. Auxin is produced by stem tips and defines up, where the stem grows, as opposed to down, where the roots grow.

What goes up must come down, except in space where the continuous free fall of orbit nulifies gravity. Astronauts in space have problems because their bodies have been relieved of the burden of coping with gravity. Prolonged weightlessness can lead to muscle atrophy. The astronaut convention for down is where the feet are. A rotating space station can produce its own gravity, like the child on a bike.

Gravity holds the Earth together and it holds the Earth in orbit around the Sun. The stars in our galaxy and all the galaxies in our universe have their form because of gravity. Gravity keeps our two feet on the ground. When it works alone and at very short distances it crushes molecules and atoms and may reduce matter to black holes. Qbjects the size of our Sun could be crushed under the force of gravity to the size of a grapefruit, with attractive forces so great that not even light could escape from its surface—hence black hole. How could this happen to an object like the Sun? Only the Sun's hydrogen furnace has to go out. Once the Sun's hydrogen fuel is expended the Sun will cool. The temperature needed to keep it at its expanded state will decrease and as it does the Sun will collapse on itself. The collapse will cause the pressure and consequently the temperature to increase and the sun may explode in a supernova or the sun may expand to the size of a red giant. If our sun reached the size of the red giant Aldebaran, the Earth would have been vaporized some time along when it was half grown. The collapse of a red giant will end when the particles of matter are packed as closely together as they can be packed. Electrons will have been stripped away and the interatomic distances will be shorted thousands of times resulting in a black hole.

Physical forces may modify gravity's effect can do not nullify it. Gravity, while it is the weakest force, can act over the distances of the universe. Gravity is the force that causes all bodies of matter no matter how large or small to be attracted to each other. The universe is expanding because of the big bang and if gravity cannot pull it back together, it will expand forever and go out. If gravity can pull it back together, it may form another singularity and start over again. A singularity may be just quantum gravity. Gravity is the determiner of our universe—the beginning, the middle and the end. It is a prime factor in the self-generating, self-regulating, decision system called the universe, of which the self-regulating Earth, on which we find our ecosystem, is a subset.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1993
Institute for domestic Tranquility