Monday 22 July 2013

Gravity is not an attraction!

Hi MEc visitors!
This is our first true article. So in high school we were taught that gravity is the attraction between two objects in the universe. Newton came to this conclusion after an apple fell on his head! But is gravity truly just an attraction??? Well, according to modern physics it’s not. I know that you are getting confused so let me explain….
After Newton gave his theory of gravity, everyone thought that it was an attraction by two object and that it was a force. But then a great scientist came whose name was Einstein (You probably heard of this guy). He then made a theory called the General Relativity and everything changed. So what does this theory mean and if gravity is not a force then what is it?
So the theory is something like this. Around us we see different objects right? So all these objects can be defined by well… three dimensions which are length, breath and height. According to us there is no fourth dimension. But according to Einstein there is a fourth dimension and the fourth dimension is time. Yes I know it sounds weird. So the 3 dimensions of space and the one dimension of time makes a total of four dimension (btw now physicists think there are more than  just 4 dimensions). So when an object with a certain amount of mass is placed then it bends Time-Space! And if any object is in the bent time-space then the object changes its course to the centre of the bent time-space.
It would be more helpful if I can show it to you.

Suppose the red cloth or whatever it is, is the time-space. The blue ball is the bigger object and the small ball is a smaller object. Say the blue ball is the sun and the smaller ball is a planet. So the planet bends the time-space in the same way as the blue ball bends the cloth. The planets and the black ball will get closer and closer to the centre because of this bent space. Gravity works in the same way. Any object bends the time-space and any other object will go the centre because of this bent time-space.
So it’s quite simple, huh? THANK YOU for reading this article. See you next week. J
[If you have any questions, mistakes or suggestions then post it in the comment section!]

Arnab
Department of Physics
MacroEducation Corporation (MEc)

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