Just one more. Escape velocity? If no mass existed buy you and the earth?

Question

and you exceeded escape velocity would you come back to the earth some day. lets say you left earth in a vertical direction so you don't go into a never ending orbit. would a light beam do the same.

you guys are saying no, never return :-( then at some distance from the earth the gravity is O then? seems the velocity would continue to decrease, stop, then reverse directions if the value for gravity force never reached ). Is there a end to empty space??

buy=but. )=0. too many typos here, good night.

Answer 1

Good question. The escape velocity is defined as the velocity needed to escape the Earth's gravitational pull and reach infinity.

But you're wondering how that could be; does it require that the Earth's gravitational pull only reach out to a certain point? Actually, this is not required. If you launch yourself from the Earth at greater than the escape velocity, here's what will happen:

Your speed will continue to decrease forever. The rate at which it decreases will lessen, however, as your distance from the Earth increases. In fact, your speed will approach a constant value - it will never reach this value, mind you, but it will continue to approach it asymptotically for the rest of time.

As an analogy, imagine a glass of water. Remove half of the water, then half of the remaining water, and so on. Although you will be removing water for the rest of time, the glass will never become empty.

Answer 2

Escape speed, or velocity, is generally accepted as being that speed at the surface of a massive body required to reach the edge of the universe with no remaining kinetic energy. If your speed was greater than 25,008 mph, vertically, you would never return.

Answer 3

By definition, no. Escape velocity is the velocity you need to go in order to escape the earth's gravitational pull.

Light beams go at the speed of light. That is, of course, fast enough to escape the earth's gravitational pull. Indeed, it's fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of anything short of a black hole.

A black hole *is*, in fact, a chunk of mass so big that the escape velocity is faster than the speed of light!

Answer 4

IF there was no mass, there would be no escape velocity.
You would have to have suction cup shoes or a teather to keep you from flying away. This is the situation during outside excursions from the space shuttle or the space station in orbit. The mass of the equipment is so small that there is very little gravitational attraction.