GRAVITY EVERYTHING
Everything that goes up must come down. That’s the story of gravity at least that’s what we believed until the Geniuses gave us a clearer view on the topic. This is the story of gravity and there are some things about gravity that we are yet to understand and how it affects everything we do.
In the 16th century, Kepler looked at the elliptical movement of planetary bodies like Saturn and Jupiter across the Sun and was wowed by the precision. He believed it was something of divine nature. He was obsessed with geometry, astronomy and astrology. His works lay the foundation for future scientist to come. But for years the science community was ignorant about how the movement of planets across the Sun worked until A brilliant man was born on Christmas day.
Isaac Newton was a very disturbed kid with a rough childhood which probably caused him to live an isolated life. One day Isaac imagined sitting under an apple tree and apple fruit falling on his head (an apple didn’t actually fall on his head. That’s a myth) and instantly he had a marvelous idea. The basic idea behind gravity is simply the force of attraction between two bodies with mass. Newton came up with an equation and a gravitational constant which is equal 6.67408 × 10–11 m3 kg-1 s-2 . Let me try to explain Newton’s equation using simple terms. The law simply states that the force of gravity between 2 bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inverse to the square of the distance. In simple english, the farther you move from a body, we lower the force of gravity between them and the closer they come together based on the mass, the stronger the gravity. Newton’s law was awesome but still incomplete because it didn’t account for instantaneous action at a distance. This simply means that according to Newton law, if I could somehow shake the Sun, the earth would shake instantaneously but in reality, it would respond after some time. This is a flaw we need to clarify, but first let’s eat some ice-cream.
So Einstein came along, written off as a dull kid in school, the only job he could get was that of a patent clark. For several years, he worked his little job until he discovered the solution to gravity. But first let’s talk of celeritas. This is simply the latin word of speed of light proposed by Michael Faraday and proved by Clark Maxwell. Now Einstein had an idea on relativity. He proposed the special relativity based on Galilean transformation and the general relativity which explains gravity which is our focus.
The idea behind General relativity is quite simple. Imagine a bedspread neatly made with no indentation, and we suddenly put a big ball in the middle, we would notice a large indentation which would alter the shape of the bedspread. Now if we put other smaller balls in the mattress, it would be attracted to the bigger ball due to the larger indentation. Now let’s relate this to space, explain some phenomenons in space and resolve Newton’s flaws.
Einstein proposed that the movement of bodies across the Sun was caused by the curvature the Sun caused due to its large mass. So it causes a curvature in Space-time which attracts other bodies to it. But you might be thinking why we don’t fall into the Sun. Well there is also a tangential force acting on the earth which keeps it in a continuous motion across the Sun. So when next we hear gravity, we note that it’s not just what goes up must come down but rather larger bodies attract smaller bodies due to the fact that they curve the space around and also the time. Yes gravity also slows down time. Don’t think I’m mad yet, let me explain. Space and time is interwoven due to the fact that we live in a 4 dimensional universe (x, y, z and t axis) so if we curve space, we also curve time and slow it down. So in essence, if we go to a larger body eg 20 times the size of the Sun, time would be slower there than on earth. Let me quickly talk on black holes. This is a caused by a singularity gotten from dead stars, a singularity is a zero dimensional substance with infinite gravity. So if we could somehow go to a black hole without dying or spaghettification (google that term) being carried out on us, we would noticed that a billion years would pass on earth meanwhile for you, it’s just a few seconds. This was Einstein idea on gravity but what does celeritas have to do with all things? Well according to Einstein, the effect was not instantaneous due to the fact that the curvature of space time moved at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second).
In recent times, Einstein and Newton’s work on gravity has been used to further understand stuffs like the big bang, Space travel, and hopefully time travel.
But funny enough some other supreme geniuses like Ronaldo and Bale have defied gravity with their awesome goals in the Champions league. Have a nice day from intern 001
