Let's discuss gravity

[binary solo]

TheRealMafoo said:

tombi123 said:

antfromtashkent said:

DaveD said:
bigger masses attract smaller masses
thus gravity

wouldnt that mean that the moon should crash into us eventually?

 

 

 No because the Sun 'pulls' the moon away from the Earth.

 

lol, funny answer.

The moon is constantly falling to earth at a very fast rate, the earth just happens to be getting out of the way at the same rate.

Let's say you had a basket ball, and a tennis ball. Now let's say you placed the basket ball on the table, and threw the tennis ball over it. if you threw the tennis ball to slow, it would hit the basket ball, and if you threw the ball to hard, it would just go flying away from the basketball. But if you threw it just right, it would stay the same distance from the basketball right up until it hit the table.

This is because the tennis ball would be falling towards the basketball at the same rate the ball was passing under it. The center of gravity however in this experiment is under the table. If the center of gravity was the center of the basketball, it would just keep going around and around, as the ball would fall at a constant rate, and be moving past at a constant rate.

Here is the bad news (and why in several billion years, you will be right). Friction slows stuff down, so if we could make the b asketball the center of gravity on earth, the tennis ball would eventuality hit it, as it slows down in the atmosphere very quickly.

The moon has very little to slow it down, but every thing that it comes in contact with, slows it down just a little bit more. One day, billions of years from now, it will crash into the earth.

But the good news is the sun will probably super nova first, so no worries :p

So you're saying that the current movement of the Moon away from the Earth will reverse and the moon will start moving towards the Earth?

The Sun is too small to supernova. The sun is getting hotter and Earth will become too hot to inhabit before the Sun does anything really drastic like swallow the Earth as a red giant. About 500 million years, I think, is the timeframe for when the oceans will boil off. Man and we are worried about a bit of CO2.

Gravity is love, it is the power of attraction