Is there a place where gravity does not exist?

Question

How can gravity be powerful enough to hold planets like Jupiter and Saturn in their orbits yet allow small space vehicles to move about the solar system? How can astronauts appear weightless in outer space when their ship is influenced by the Sun's gravity?

Is gravity everywhere?

Answer 1

where there is planetary orbit, there will be gravity. the earth has gravity just as the moon does. hence, if you were to travel to the moon from earth, you will experience the lessening of the earth's effect and the increase of the other. you will come to a point where the two forces of gravity cancel each other out. there is zero gravity at this point but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, they merely cancel each other out.

also, in deep space where everything is a zillion light years apart, theoretically, if you are far enough from any orbiting mass, you will not experience any force of gravity.

Answer 2

Non-technical answer.

Gravity is everywhere.

It is the force of attraction created or part of all matter.

It is actually a fairly weak force as forces go, and its influence drops off rapidly with distance.

For instance, the force holding together molecules is stronger and the force holding atoms together is much stronger still.

The reason a planet can keep its distance from the sun is that it also has the momentum of its orbital speed keeping it in place. If by some magical means a planet could be stopped in its tracks, it would fall into the sun. Just like a satellite that touches the upper atmosphere gets slowed enough to lose its speed and falls to earth. Alternately, if a planet could be made to speed up, it would escape the suns gravity, much like we get spaceships to go fast enough to leave earth.

Similarly, an astronaut can float around and not fall into the sun because he is already moving as fast as the earth through space. Something like fifty miles a second. More distant planets move slower, but still on the order of miles per second.

Gravity from the entire universe affects the motion of the earth and moon, but even though the gravity of the universe is infinitely more powerful than the gravity generated by the moon, the moon is infinitely closer to the earth.

That is why the moon causes tides, but not the universe.

I hope this helps

Answer 3

Gravity is everywhere. Gravity has no upper limit, it all depends on the mass of the object in question. The gravitational effect (from the sun, for example) on small space vehicles is very negligible. However, if you blast off from the Earth and escape Earth's gravity, you WILL rotate around the sun. If you have the fuel, you could escape the sun's gravity, but it would take a huge amount of fuel and a very long burn. The last part of your question, the "weightless" thing, is that the astronauts are in free-fall. They are falling towards the earth at the same rate the curvature of the earth is curving away from them. It's the same as if you jump off a great height. Discounting air resistance, you wouldn't feel like you weighed anything, until you go "splat."

Answer 4

Gravity is everywhere. Space is how we interpret our experience with gravitational potential energy. But there are parts of space where the gravitational forces balance each other, so that you would have no net acceleration.

Jupiter is "falling around the sun" in an orbit. Saturn is falling around the sun in a different orbit. A spaceship falls around the sun in yet another orbit. The sun is so much more massive than even Jupiter that it's motion in response to Jupiter's pull is very small.

However, the sun DOES move in response to the tugs of the planets, primarily Jupiter. Over the course of time, the sun moves through a MacLaurin ellipsoid having its two longest axes (each about two solar diameters long) in a plane nearly identical with the plane of Jupiter's orbit. The minor axis is only about 0.1 solar diameters long.

The sun's motion within this highly flattened ellipsoid is complicated because Saturn is a significant perturber. And the perturbations of Uranus accumulate over a period of several months to the point where they are noticeable.

The astronaut outside a spaceship is falling together with his spaceship around the sun. (Or around the Earth, depending on which object has him bound the most tightly.) When you're falling through a vacuum, you don't feel any "pressure" from gravity because you aren't resisting it.

Answer 5

Yes there is Gravity everywhere.

The Astronauts are "weightless" because they are in free fall and have only microgravity to experience.

Planets retain orbit because they are experiencing centrifugal force away from the sun as well as gravitational force towards it.

PS .. God had no clue how gravity works, and even less about idea what space is like. Clearly god never had anything to do with making them despite the beliefs of religious clips.

Answer 6

According to Law of Gravitation, a mass will experience a force induced by another mass and this force is called gravity. Therefore as long as there is another mass in this universe other than yourself, there will be gravity. The strenght is the question.

What hold the planets in their orbits is a combination of the suns gravitaional force and and the centrifugal force (not a real force) produced by their revolution.

An austronaut appearing wieghtless is because the gravitational force between him and the sun is incredibly small. The gravitational force between two objects is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Therefore, gravitaional force between planets (very big) and sun (also very big) is so much more stronger than that between the sun and an austronaut(relatively very small). The keyword in your statement is that the astronaut "appears" weightless. In reality, he is not. It is more convincingly "weightless" when you are freefalling than when you are in space.

Answer 7

Yes it is everywhere.

But it can be balanced between bodies. Between the Moon and Earth there are Lagrange points where the attraction of both bodies is exactly equal. But then the Sun sill exerts a pull as we circle it.

Thing is it is a very small force "out there".

And astronauts and spaceships are simply traveling relative to other bodies and are "falling together" as we orbit the Sun just fast enough to balance the falling inward towards it with the travel away from (around) it. Escape velocity means we travel faster around a body than falling towards it and we break the bond and leave its influence.

Answer 8

gravity is NOT everywhere... there are small regions of space where you can consider the gravity field = 0 since they are points in space where all gravity fields cancel each other out.

See "lagrangian points"

Answer 9

Somewear have a gravity but are low and when we are going to wolk we ar going to fly. The san dasen't have the moon have but low and the mars too but on the erth is oll with gravity but in treining pods dosent have

Answer 10

because they are of a smaller mass, there is a theory however that gravity doesnt exist, it comes from astro physisists (I have no idea how to spell that) they think that gravity gomes from an 11th level dimention, and is shared by all in our portal, but it is rather a radical and light theory.