Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Is there gravity in outer space? Explain.

Gravity is the longest range force that comprise our Universe, and is a property of matter, so where there's matter, there's gravity.  On Earth we experience it as the phenomenon of "falling down."  If you stand on the Earth and drop a teacup, it falls and smashes on the ground; we say that gravity pulled it to the Earth.  However, the teacup, because it is also matter, pulls the Earth towards itself, however weakly. Each piece of matter in the Universe is attracted to and attracted by every other piece of matter.  For the most part, this attraction is extremely weak, but extremely pervasive.  The force of gravity weakens over distance fairly quickly, but it never becomes zero.  In outer space, for example, which is mostly a vacuum, there's barely any gravitational force but it is in fact there; some estimates claim in deep space you may find just one atom in a cubic metre of space.  Conversely, where there's a lot of matter, there's a lot of gravity.  The gravitational force found near a star, for example, is huge because the star is massive.  Bigger stars have more gravity; ultimately, Black Holes possess so much gravitational force no piece of matter can move away from it if it gets close enough, and the force it possesses is quite strong even at huge distances.

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