What is Gravity???

>>7709756
It's a force like magnetism; it can do work in the physics definition; thus, it is a force.

In layman's terms it's the attraction of matter to more matter; like how two magnets stick to each other, and how those two will gather more and more until there's a massive clump of magnets, and none in the immediate area.

Bad example, but it gets the point across. Swap magnets for any matter- gas, elements, molecules, rocks, planets... That's how you get atmospheres, solar systems, galaxies, and everything else down to the atomic level; that goes into things that I won't discuss here.

>>7709763
>>7709766
>>7709767

You are such a collosal faggot.

>>7709763
>>7709766
>>7709767

He asked about gravity itself, not relativity, quantum mechanics, or the origin of matter. 99% of your posts had nothing to do with the OP's simple question.

>>7709772, bugger off. He's not wrong entirely. There are some good points in here.

>>7709777
Fuck YOU,

>>7709785
You, can it. You're doing nothing but shitposting. So git.

>>7709787
You pulled some 2001 shit on OP and now he's probably got a migraine curled up in his bed rocking back and forth.

Elementary questions deserve elementary answers; save your thesis for the right time and place. Wouldn't wear your Sunday best to a baseball game.

>>7709802
I've seen the way; I'm studying mechanical engineering with the endgoal of going to JPL. I know I'll never get to travel the stars, but maybe my life's work will help someone else do that.

And that's just as good, right...?

>>7709756

It is assumed to be a force, like the other already unified forces of electromagnetism, weak and strong forces, but evades integration with that bundle of forces and stands out like a sore thumb up the ass of the standard model.

The only thing known for sure is that it is an interaction between matter and spacetime, other than that it's only guesswork until at least gravity waves are observed.

>>7709919

Anyone who claims to KNOW what gravity is, is a fucking lying cunt.

Gravity is the mutual attraction of particles of mass, it distorts volumetric space elongating it. Bodies of mass are mutually attracted to one another and the phenomenon or orbits occurs from the angular velocity sufficiently displacing this attraction. This gives trajectories a differing eccentricity during transit across a defined system. The Sun to orbits the Earth, and this occurs at the baryonic center of mass between the orbiting bodies.

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/my-solar-system/my-solar-system_en.html

Have fun making disasters.

>>7709756
Gravity is a force, by definition: it causes things to accelerate, and anything which does that is a force.

If you're asking where that force "comes from", it depends. In general relativity, it comes from "curved spacetime" - which sounds really esoteric and hard to understand, until you think about what it actually means.

Imagine two cars going 50 mph on a curved racetrack, one in the outer lane and one in the inner lane: they start out next to each other on the starting line, but because the outer edge of the racetrack is longer than the inner edge, the car in the outer lane will start to fall behind. From the perspective of the car on the outer lane, the inner car is mysteriously accelerating away from it.

That's (sort of) how "curved spacetime" can account for gravity - the difference in distance along nearby paths through space and time will cause initially parallel trajectories starting out right next to each other to diverge.

If you're not sure exactly how this works, imagine two-dimensional space-time, with a "space" axis and a "time" axis. Any line in this space represent's a particle's movement through space and time, so its slope represents the velocity - the rate at which it moves in space, divided by the rate at which it moves in time.

Any two parallel lines thus represent particles that are stationary relative to each other - their distance in space never changes.

But if these lines bend towards each other, then that means their distance in space changes - they're accelerating towards each other.