Effective gravity and temperature

[pioneer]

This idea came to me the other day. From a practical point of view, gravity is more effective at lower temperature. This is not to say that the gravitational force is a function of temperature, just that the same amount of gravity is more affective at lower temperature. For example, if we could switch off the fusion core of the sun, so it cools, gravity can make it smaller. If we switch it back on and increase the temperature it fluff out against the same amount of gravity making gravity less effective.

 

The coldness of space actually helps out gravity making its impact more effective. It doesn't change the force but makes the force more effective. Ironically, using this line of reason the expansion of the universe, by helping to water down energy and cool the universe, may help gravity. On the one hand the total force is lowering but the affective force remains higher that it would be is we had a fixed sized universe that was warming.

 

Along these lines of reason one can add entropy. To increase entropy one needs to add energy. A colder temperature does not favor entropy as much as a warmer temperature, since there is less energy to absorb. This implies that the colder temperature lowers entropy potential making it easier for the higher affective gravity to overcome the lowered entropy. It sort of adds a bonus affect for the more affective gravity.

[Klaynos]

Why do you say this?

 

I am going to agree with you in part, if we turned off the fusion core of the sun and all the photons from the fusion had reached us and passed us (this would take a LONG TIME as photons take a very great deal of time to escape the core) then we would feel a slightly stronger attraction to the sun because there would would less photon pressure, but this effect is infinitesimally small compared to gravity at this range...

[D H]

For example, if we could switch off the fusion core of the sun, so it cools, gravity can make it smaller. If we switch it back on and increase the temperature it fluff out against the same amount of gravity making gravity less effective...

The gravitational attraction of the Sun on the Earth remains the same whether the sun collapses to a neutron star or swells to engulf Venus' orbit. An object with a spherically-symmetric mass distribution acts exactly the same as a point mass located at center of mass of the object. This is a standard result from freshman-level physics.