• Question: explain gravity

    Asked by mariobalotelli45 to Áine, Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia, Victoria on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Lydia Bach

      Lydia Bach answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Hi!

      So everything that has mass creates a gravitational field around it, so whenever another object comes close it interacts with that gravitational field. The heavier something is the stronger is its force.
      So the sun is the heaviest thing in our solar system and keeps us in its orbit, just as we keep the smaller moon in our orbit.

      So gravity is a force, but at the same time also a curvature in the space-time continuum – according to Einstein. That’s baffling, but kind of means that the mass of something can cause space to curve… You can’t see the curvature but you can see how objects move in the gravitational field of a very heavy body:

      And why that is we still don’t really understand!

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