What would happen if gravity just vanished?

Question

would the earth fall down? if so....what would be pulling earth downwards?....help me I've been thinking bout this all last night....!!! my girlfriend kicked me outta the bed...(weep)

Answer 1

The quick "local" answer would be that the earth would fly into cold space leaving the Sun's orbit on a tangent, the moon would leave the earth in the same way. The first time you took a step you'd be at risk of rising into the sky and beyond... which wouldn't be such a bad thing because the atmosphere would be expanding rapidly into space so there wouldn't be much to breath here... sound like fun?

Aloha

Answer 2

I just found this if we had no gravity earth would just zoom off in one direction read this i hope it answers your question

Cancelling Gravity

If there had been no gravity at all, then there would be no stars or planets or galaxies or black holes or people, but only clouds of gas and dust, fairly evenly spread across the Universe and much colder than it ever gets at the South Pole.

If you could cancel the gravity between the Sun and the Earth, then the Earth would fly away in a straight line in the direction in which it happened to be going when the gravity quit, and at the speed relative to the Sun that it happened to have when the gravity stopped, because the first Law of Newton says that something upon which no forces act moves at a constant speed along a straight line. The orbital speed of the Earth is about 30 km/s or about 1 AU per 58 days, so the Earth would then move away from the Sun at about that speed.

However, as far as we know it is impossible to turn off gravity, because it is a characteristic of mass. If there is mass somewhere, then there is gravity, too.

The only circumstance in which you don't feel any weight is when you are in free fall. In space, you can keep this up for as long as you want, but near the surface of the Earth you can do this only for a short while, for example in an airplane that flies up and down along the proper parabolic trajectory. Search the internet for "vomit comet" for examples. To get into and out of that trajectory again you need to make turns that make you feel more weight than you have on the ground. Astronauts train for weightlessness inside such an airplane.

Astronauts train for space walks by going under water. If you wear a proper diving suit, then you are not weightless, but you do float.

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Answer 3

Contrary to what most of these answers say, we would not float up. We would be blasted upwards and into many little burnt pieces as the pressure caused by heat inside the Earth was suddenly released, causing the Earth to explode. The fact that the Earth is also spinning rather quickly would make the explosion even more violent, and cause it to occur in a sort of flat, pancake-like shape. The Moon probably wouldn't blow apart, as it is not molten inside, but it would immediately fly away on a tangent to its original orbit. Additionally, and most destructively, the Sun would also explode, and a few hours after gravity vanished the remains of the Earth would be hit by a wave of extremely hot hydrogen, which would completely fry it.

Over the longer term, most of the other planets in the Solar System would also explode, and those that didn't would fly off on tangents to their orbits. Over the next few thousand years the galaxy would begin to fly apart, as well as being bathed in a wave of gamma rays due to the central black hole (which has a mass several million times that of the Sun) turning entirely into energy and exploding. And farther even in the future than that, the Universe's expansion would accelerate enormously as dark energy began pushing it towards the speed of light.

But we won't be around for any of that. We'd be lucky to last a few seconds.

Answer 4

If Gravity just vanished all the humans animals and what ever else lives here would end up floating into space and the Earth might move away from the Sun causing the Earth to freeze after a couple of Light Years away and every-ones head would explode once they got into space with no protection, people would most likely not make it to space because gravity sustains the atmosphere and with no atmosphere we could not breath.

Answer 5

Everyone would simply die. Reason?? Gravity holds the atmosphere and the water, like oceans, etc. For some time it would be fun floating in air and then everything would come to an end.... Besides the spherical surface of the earth is due gravity that contracts the mass towards the center.. No gravity no holding of mass.. The earth would become irregular in shape, the moon will escape.. what else can you imagine???

Answer 6

A lot of people have given the obvious answers... earth spinning off into space, the planet flying apart, etc.

The problem is, when you say if gravity just "vanished" you need to clarify if you mean a local phenomenon, one just affecting the Earth (impossible of course, but for arguments sake), or a universal phenomenon, like how would the universe operate without gravity.

Locally (lets say an alien force attacked and temporarily neutralized the Earths gravity with their anti-gravity beam) we'd have all the problems that many people have pointed out. We'd be dead real fast.

In the larger context, it's likely the universe simply could not function without gravity. Aside from all the obvious reasons, gravity is intimately connected to the fabric of space-time (according to Einstein) and without the displacement of space-time due to the gravity of various massive objects, it seems likely that everything would simply "stop." There would no longer be any difference in potential. Motion, nuclear force, probably even time itself would cease to be. It would be like removing a dimension from existence so that things only had length and width, but no depth. The universe would be one gigantic flat plane. Reality, as we experience it, would no longer make sense, or perhaps we'd simply be in a different dimension.

It's a crazy question that can drive you mad, but we all get stuck on them from time to time. Once, for three months, I spent all my spare time asking people what the meaning of life was. It was like trying to get that "stuck tune" out of your head.

Answer 7

Well for one thing, the earth would fall apart since it's gravity's doing that is keeping all the lava, rocks and other elements that make up earth together. Also things would just float in space and humans and living things will cease to exist because of the non-presence of oxygen gas and other essential elements that living things need to survive.

Answer 8

Gravity is one of the basic forces (along with electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and I forget the rest.) One unfortunate consequence of gravity ceasing to operate would be that the sun's gravity would cease to hold us in orbit, our planet would fly off into outer space, and it would get way too cold for life to go on existing. However, we might not notice this, because the earth's own gravity ceasing to operate would mean that this planet's atmosphere would rapidly dissipate into space, so we'd suffocate pretty quickly. Provided we weren't all flying around and bumping into buildings things incredibly hard, by that stage, which we might well be doing.

Answer 9

The simple answer is that everything would explode and freeze!

You see, there are forces which push upward in equilibrium with gravity. Without gravity, they would expand outward and upward from the entire surface of every body, planet, star, and blackhole (which is primarily held together into the very dense and small mass of stars and galaxies upon which it fed, there would be the largest explosions .. big bang theory? maybe). The entire atmosphere would be gone in seconds, sucking us up with it.

As the air expands upwards, the pressure drops everywhere and the temperatures drop also. Our bodies would expand as there would be no balancing air pressure pushing us inward, and gases in our blood would bubble out of solution while our skin froze and shattered with the expansion. Water would boil, and everything would pop like popcorn, sending shrapnel everywhere outward.

The hot gases of the sun and stars would fly outward and some would hit the earth in a matter of minutes. Blackholes would destroy surrounding solar systems and universes with their explosions.

Pretty sick and scary imagery, eh? Well, you asked. Gravity is very impotant to us.

Answer 10

Mahahahaha. properly if gravity all the surprising to vanish. No ingredient might want to be retaining the Earth at the same time. each ingredient might want to be flying into area. it would want to probably explode because of all the nice and cozy temperature contained in the Earth, attempting to push out ward. yet gravity keeps it down. The crust will fly off, the mantel might want to desinagrate because surely gravity holds beverages at the same time. the surely very last area of the Earth might want to be its center. because the middle is organic metallic and sturdy. And sturdy metallic is held at the same time with the help of metallic bonds no longer gravity So the it would not be sturdy.