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What is gravity?


MaDos

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Hey everyone.

 

To start off, just to let you all know I'm just an ordinary person with no scientific skills or qualifications. Just in a pub at the moment and have a few thoughts!

 

I was pondering with my pint as you do and wondered, in terms of gravity, as a force, can it not be defined in the same way as the weather?.

 

I'll explain.

 

If we look at the earth like the universe, a contained number of atoms within an atmosphere that has various amounts of densities, the earth itself being the largest and the rest diminishing from there. When you have an area of low pressure, weather is drawn into that area, the speed of which is determined by various factors including the size of the area of low pressure.

 

If the universe were the same in structure as the earth with a contained set amount of atoms, when you concentrate a percentage of these atoms in one place ie a planet, do you not create an area of "lower pressure" due to the irregular quantity of atoms, thus attracting the rest of the contained area towards it?

 

Your thoughts please to ease a simpletons mind 😃 thank you.

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The problem with gravity as a pushing force, as pressure is, is how/why it is directed toward the center of spheres, and why spheres at certain locations but not others. i.e. why is the earth an area of low pressure, and why is there an area of low pressure where a planet or star forms? Pressure of what? Thermodynamic pressure is a manifestation of collisions of particles.

 

It also doesn't explain why two bodies are apparently attracted to each other to form orbits, which is a fairly elegant result if gravity is an attractive force with a 1/r2 dependency.

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And, in fact, an abnormally high concentration would create an area of "high pressure" rather than "low pressure" and it does. A pressure which gravity counteracts to keep it all together.

Like in the center of a collapsing nebula the pressure builds due to gravity drawing the dust and molecules together, the material heats up the gas pressure counteracts the collapse due to gravity but the gravity overcomes the temperature rise so gravity ultimately dominates.

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