Question: How come there is like no gravity in outta space? Answer my question please. :)

Keywords: ,

  1. There is gravity in space! Gravity keeps the planets in orbit around the sun, and the moon in orbit around the earth. The force of gravity is related to the mass and decreases exponentially with distance between objects. This means that if you move twice as far away from something, the gravity would be four times weaker. So, as something like a spacecraft is very small compared to the mass of the earth, when it moves further away from the earth, the gravity rapidly decreases until it’s so weak you can’t feel it.

    1

  2. Renee is correct, there is of course gravity in spece. Here is a link with some more details.
    http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/zoom-grav.html

    0

  3. Yes there is, there is gravity everywhere in the universe! Actually the term micro-gravity is used to indicate this when referring to gravity in outer space. However, the effects of gravity are very small when you are away from large objects like planets. Elise and Renee’s answers cover this well.

    0

  4. What is gravity? Gravity is the attraction of mass to each other. The exact equation is at http://i.ajdesigner.com/gravity/newtons_law_gravity_equation_force.png

    So, this means that you are attracted to your chair, your desk, your teacher, the lamp in your classroom, the door as well as every other object around. Of course, they are also attracted to you by the same force. The reason you do not end up sticking to the wall is that the attraction between you and the wall is very very very tiny. You don’t even feel it. The only force you feel is the attraction to earth. Earth has a very large mass 5.9742 x 10^24 kg.

    You are also attracted to the sun every second of the day, but you don’t go flying out because your attraction to earth is so much stronger than the attraction to the sun. If got in a space ship and started traveling from earth to the sun, slowly the attraction to the sun would increase as you got closer and the attraction to earth would slowly decrease. It would never be “zero”, there will always be some gravitational force on you from the earth and the sun, but one might be much larger than the other.

    In fact, there is a bit of gravity on you from each of the stars and planets, from moons and astroids, but they are usually so small that we can ignore their gravitational pull while we are walking around on Earth. The important things is no matter where you go, no matter how far you travel, there is always some attraction between you and all the other pieces of mass. No escaping gravity!

    🙂

    0

  5. The other scientists have pretty much covered this one – like they say there is gravity in space! Gravity is what keeps our planet in orbit around the sun. While it is increased on/near to large bodies like planets, and it decreases the further away you are such bodies it still is there. Even asteroids have a weak gravitational pull.

    0

Comments

  1. yet again great awser renee

    2 Reply to this comment

  2. Thanks guys : )

    0 Reply to this comment

  3. Why isn’t there ALOT of gravity on other planets, Not as much as Earth (I think)?

    1 Reply to this comment

    • Elise

      The force of gravity is proportional to a planet’s mass. So some planets have less gravity than Earth because they are smaller in mass and/or density. Jupiter has the greatest force of gravity (about 2.5 times that of Earth) so you would be extra heavy there!! Many of the planets are composed predominently of gas and so whilst some are bigger than Earth, they are less dense (Saturn and Uranus) and so gravity is less than on Earth.

      1 Reply to this comment

  4. The gravitational pull on the surface of other planets depends on both the mass and density. The biggest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, have gravity much greater than that on Earth. The smaller ones like Mercury, Venus and Mars have gravity less than Earth. But, Mars has a much larger size and mass than Mercury, but their gravity is very similar because Mercury is much more dense than Mars.

    1 Reply to this comment