eli5 What are gravity and electric fields made out of?

250 views

What makes gravity apply force to objects? Why does gravity not get pulled into the center of gravity itself, or scatter? I know that every physical body has some amount of gravity, that attracts other bodies. I also know that in order to make one physical body move, another physical body must apply force to it, so what is that physical body that gravity is made out of?

Also electric fields of magnets and atoms. What keeps the electrons from flying away from the nucleus? Is it same as gravity?

Is gravity our spacetime “sinking” into itself due to high amount of matter in one spot? Then what physical thing is the spacetime made out of to be affectable by matter?

I know its a lot of speculation and questions on my part, but i am fascinated by how physics does its thing.

In: 109

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Well concerning gravity, objects of high mass deform what is known as “spacetime”, which is the “fabric of the universe”. This deformation causes objects to fall inward to the gravitational center, or changes the path of photons travelling through warped spacetime, like gravitational lensing around a black hole.

The ELI5 version is to imagine a bowling ball on a tightly spun sheet fixed at all 4 corners. The ball curves the sheet more and more at the part of the sheet where the ball is closest to the sheet, decreasing over distance. A similar deformation caused by mass is presumed in gravity, but in 3 dimensions instead of the 2 in this example.

To answer your primary question at a basic level, gravitational fields aren’t made of anything, they are rather a distortion or *change in shape* of the something (spacetime) that was always there (relatively speaking). Think of the surface area of a balloon before and after being inflated as a concept.

Electric fields probably operate along similar principles due to the similarities of the formulas for these, but I will read the better answers about that here eagerly.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.