Do you know what gravity is?

Question

and don't give us so some trumped up version of what Newtons laws state. Just what the hell is it?

'WHAT' is it. I know what it does. Sorry if that appears aggressive. 'WHAT' is it composed of, what is it made of. That's what I meant. Sorry.

Answer 1

Gravity is a acceleration, a measure, a value
Gravitational force is the measure of a mass experiencing gravity.

Physics is everything that can be measure, not everything that has "matter"

Answer 2

It is just a force of attraction between two massive bodies. It has a finite speed. And Newton just gave us a way to quantify it.

If you are asking about how it is "transmitted" through space, the current theory (and I emphasize the word theory, because it is only speculation and has not been verified yet) is that there are gravitic waves that travel through space and attract other massive bodies. The problem is that these gravitic waves have been one of the most sought after things in all of science but they have not yet been detected.

This theory is plausible because electric charge and magnetism have the same behavior and they use waves also which we already know exist. Electric charge uses electric field lines which by convention, come out of the positive charge and go into the negative charge. Magnets do the same thing. Magnetic field lines come out of the north pole of a magnet and then go into the south pole. Both of these waves also have finite velocity through space and apparently they don't need a medium to travel through either. They can go through space even if it is a vacuum.

So you can see the similarity between these three kind of phenomena. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that gravity is also caused by waves.

Another explanation, made popular by Einstein (but also not universally accepted as the final explanation) is that gravity is just a dent or a bent in the fabric of space time continuum. Imagine a very soft mattress that is perfectly flat. Now, if you were to put a massive bowling ball on it, the mattress will curve around the ball. So now, if you take a little marble and put it on the mattress, it will naturally go towards the big bowling ball. Seems like gravity doesn't it. The reason this explanation makes sense is because Einstein predicted (and it has been experimentally proven over the last century) that gravity has all sorts of effects on space AND time around it. And everything is consistent if we think of mass curving space and time around it. Gravity slows down time and gravity bends space around it. One famous experiment done was to see if the Sun bends light or not. Out Earth is not massive enough to bend light with a noticeable angle. But the sun is much more massive and we might be able to detect stars that we know are actually behind the sun. And this is exactly what happened. During an eclipse, here from Earth, we were able to see stars that were supposed to be behind the sun. Which means that the light coming from those stars WAS NOT traveling in a straight line.

So now you have two very reasonable explanations. Both of these theories explain some observations but reject others. So they are both very good candidates but Physicists have not yet accepted one over the other.

Answer 3

Here is the most accurate description of what gravity is. It is by Einstein. He recognized that since gravity acts on objects instantaneously, then according to Newton's definition of gravity it would require the force to function at speeds greater than the speed of light which we know is impossible. What he proposed and has been proven is that massive objects such as the earth actually warp space and this causes gravity. This warping of space can best be most easily visualized by imagining this; if you take a large sheet of rubber and stretch it and fasten each edge in place over a hole. The rubber sheet represents space. Now place a bowling ball in the middle of the rubber sheet. The bowling ball represents the earth. The bowling ball will make a dent in the rubber sheet. The dent represents the warping of space. Now roll a marble across the rubber sheet. It will roll and eventually roll down to the bowling ball. That rolling of the marble on the rubber sheet towards the bowling ball is how gravity works. I hope this helps you out

Answer 4

We really, honestly, don't know. We can measure it and predict it. We know its properties. But we don't know why it happens. The general relativity view that spacetime is warped in the presence of mass still has no explanation for why that is true. Nor do we know the reasons for the other fundamental forces.

Its propagation speed is still debated among scientists. The 1993 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a team who reached the conclusion that gravity propagates at the speed of light, based on astronomical observations. Watch for results from the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) projects, and the work of Joseph Taylor and Russel Hulse at Princeton.

Perhaps some of the current research will figure it out: quantum gravity, quantum loop gravity, string theory, M-brane theory, and so on.

Answer 5

Mass tells space how to deform. Deformed space tells mass how to move. The Weyl tensor isn't having any of that, but live with it.

Gravitation is spacetime curvature - metric gravitation; General Relativity (Einstein)

Gravitation is spacetime torsion - nonmetric gravitation; affine (Einstein-Cartan), teleparallel (Weitzenböck), noncommutative (Connes).

Ya places yer bets and ya takes yer chances. The two alternatives only disagree in matters of angular momentum, and then only measruably in one case that has never been examined: Do chemically identical resolved opposite parity mass distributions violate the Equivalence Principle?

Answer 6

Gravity is- The natural force of attraction exerted by a celestial body, such as Earth, upon objects at or near its surface, tending to draw them toward the center of the body. b. The natural force of attraction between any two massive bodies, which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. That is- Gravitation. Have a good evening.. Ciao*

Answer 7

It is a force that occurs in nature. Like the stong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. For example, why does a magnet attract iron objects. That's just as mysterious.

Answer 8

Gravitation is the natural phenomenon that gives objects weight, keeps planets in orbit, gives rise to tides. etc.

Gravity is a force which objects with mass are theorized to exert on each other to cause gravitation.

Answer 9

Simply:
Its a force
It keeps us on the ground (if there was no gravity we would all be floating around
It tends to draw all bodies in toward the earths center
It gives our bodies weight

Answer 10

its a property of the big acme firecracker that went kablooey about 13 billion years ago,,,,,,,it is an attracting force in mass in which the larger mass force dominates and holds a smaller mass.,like when yer brudder dont stand still forya ta tie his shoes,ya biffem,not too hard i hope,ta stand still .gravity and magnetism are related,so is the strong force that holds atomic particles together,like glue,,,if earth had strong force holding us down,we'd spread out to every cell & atom of the body flattened out to one atom in height,occupying a thousand square mile of earth.if you spin two copper wound coils inside a container like a thermos bottle with 2 or more magnets,with a wire from each magnet hooked to a light bulb,,the spinning inside the magnetic field produces,,,,,,electricity,,,,,a relatively weaker gravity field slows down time,as when a boeing 787 goes up to 40 thousand feet,a super precise clock records a few billionths of time difference versus an identical clock at sea level,as for looking at it under a microscope,cant see it,cant bottle it,frame it,cut it,freeze it,,its presence is deduced by its effects