Does Magnitism and Gravity have anything to do with each other?

Question

without looking too deeply into it i thought i would ask this on yahoo answers.
my boss at work said that the reason we are not floating away into space is because a magnet in the middle of the earth is pulling us all towards it. I did not agree. What is the answer?

Answer 1

Your boss is completely wrong. Gravity is a completely different force than magnetism in this context. There is no known connection. It is one of the main goals of theoretical physics to discover any connection between such forces.

Answer 2

Any object with a finite mass exerts a finite gravitational pull on another object. This is measured by newton's law of gravitation where F = G (mass object A)(mass of object B) /(distance between objects)^2, it takes a massive body such as a planet for this force to be of any considerable magnitude since the the gravitational constant G is such a small number. Magnetism is a phenomena that cause objects to exert attactive and repulsive forces on one another. This has to do with the electron configuration of all elements. In metals this phenomena is easily seen because charged particles tend to separate and align themselves in such a way that results in a magnetic field. The earth's core is mostly composed of iron ore which creates a massive magnetic field (that is why compasses work). But in general this magnetic field is not responsible for pulling you towards the ground. I see how your boss linked one with the other because magnets tend to "pull" things when in all reality this is not the source of the "pull". Gravity is a very abstract concept because there's nothing physically pulling you.

Answer 3

The universe, as we can observe it, has four known forces: electromagnetic, weak atomic, strong atomic and gravity. It is, of course gravity that keeps us from floating in space. Interestingly enough, this is also the weakest force of all. So weak that it hardly fits with the three others. Scientists have tried to merge all forces together as they were supposed to be in the first seconds following the big bang but gravity is the one that causes problems. The three others can be seen as similar if enough heat and pressure exists, but not gravity. Much of the work in quantum mechanics is exactly done to try to integrate gravity to the rest of the forces.
Gravity, interestingly enough, also affect electro-magnetism as it bends light and time. Yes, the well known 'twins paradox' applies also to two twins where one lives at sea level and the other on the top of a mountains. At the end of their life, one will have been living a fraction of a second longer than the other.

Answer 4

Magnetism and gravity are two completely unrelated forces.

Gravity is caused by a huge massive object (like the Earth) warping space around it.

Magnetism is related to the behavior of electrons in certain elements - iron, nickel, and cobalt are the most recognized, though under very specific circumstances even elements like oxygen can demonstrate some mild response to magnetism.

Answer 5

I think he's loosely referring to the earth's gravitational pull, which does act like a magnet to keep things on surface.

However, there's isn't a magnet actually in the middle of the earth working in this fashion.

Answer 6

None. The attraction/repulsion is occurring only between magnetic materials. Man cannot be affected by magnetism but he can be affected by gravitational pull. It is true that we can't float in space since the gravitational pull to us will not allow it; however, in space the distance is so great such that the pull is already negligible. The gravitational pull between two objects varies inversely as the square of the distance between them.

Answer 7

technically you could call it a magnet. since the earth is a big ball of mass things are attracted to it because of its size. if the earth were smaller we would have less gravity. and vice versa.