Imagine I threw something in space with a certain force, will it keep going forever in the direction thrown since there is no resistance? Or will it stop depending on the force?
Also suppose so much time has passed will the object still be floating (still moving a little bit here and there) or will it stand exactly still.
In: Physics
Yes an object you throw will continue to move with the same speed untill its slowed down by something.
This is the first law of Newtons laws.
> A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion
So it will not slow down over time and continue forever unless it hits something.
Force is not a useful way to look at this. Once it’s moving, there’s no force, it keeps moving.
Of course, in space, there’s still all sorts of gravity, so there’s still forces acting on it. Those forces are just usually also acting on you, if you just threw the object, so you’re falling with it and it doesn’t seem to do anything.
There is no force stopping it, there is no resistance. It will move with the same speed forever, unless a planet or sun’s gravity affects it
yes, there is no air resistance to stop them from moving. But they can be affected extremely slowly by solar wind or radiation which pushes on objects but the force is extremely small.
But gravity will affect them, everything that has mass also has gravity, planets, asteroids, even you have gravity and your gravity is pulling the earth towards you, and the earth pulls you towards it but the earth gravity is a lot stronger than your gravity because its a lot heavier.
Your gravity also pulls the space station towards you, and the space station pulls you towards it, but the force is extremely small. Your gravity also pulls the moon, but again, the effect is extremely small and the moon pulls you towards it, and also pulls the earth towards it, this is why we have waves. Its the moon pulling the water towards it forming waves.
Everything has its own gravity as long as it has mass and is affecting other objects with mass, if 2 small tennis balls are placed in space no other force added, after a long period of time they will start to drift towards each other this is how planets and stars are formed, dust has mass that creates gravity and attracts other small dust particles creating small rocks that have more mass and also a stronger gravity attracting more small rocks and dust forming asteroids that then form planets, if there is too much mass the gravity is extremely strong, strong enough to combine atoms and create nuclear fission which creates a lot of heat and energy turning the “planet” into a star, if its a lot of mass in one place, the gravity is so strong causing a singularity, which is a black hole. We are still studying them, there are many theories about it and we can’t see them in action because nothing escapes them not even light, so we can’t find information about what’s inside and only what is on its edge. There are theories like the gravity was so big it ripped a hole in the space fabric, like a hole in a bath tub or sink sucking everything in. Or that they are wormholes, or parallel universes. we just can’t know for sure because we can’t look inside.
And also gravity is not a force, but its an effect caused by mass because it deform space, though there are still experiments trying to find a particle carrying the force of gravity because any other fundamental force is carried by a particle, but gravity seems to be the only one that has no carrying particle, so its a theory that is not an actual force, but an effect of something else, that being the deformation of space. Like putting 2 heavy objects close to each other in your bed, your bed starts to deform a little bit and those 2 things get together not because they are attracted to each other but because the bed deforms creating a slight dent that makes those things get closer together
Answers by others are correct. Here is my answer in a more realistic scenario
In reality almost no area of space is without any gravity except few voids. So let’s take a realistic example of an astronaut throwing an Object in space from space station. Since the space station is already orbiting earth due to force of gravity from earth, this Object will separate from astronaut but it will maintain some orbit around the earth and it will keep orbiting earth forever.
There are chances it will collide with some debris in space and maybe loose energy plunge violently towards earth and may burn itself while entering atmosphere at such high speeds.
As usually, it depends. But assume you are in Earth’s orbit it will rather orbit Earth as weell, but ewen if you are at 400 km above Earth sirface there is Tiny amount of ait that will cause drag and eventually deorbit it. If You could throw it with velocity above 11km/s it could leave Earth gravity influence and strat orbit the Sun. If it is thrown with speed about 16km/s it could leave our solar system. For the velocities look for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd space velocity. And if you fly through the space it is very unlikely to hit anything. The space probes leaving Solar System and passing asteroids belt did not hit anything. Even if two galaxies collide each other it is very unlikely for two stars hit directly. The space is very, very, very,… big.
Newton’s First Law tells us that an object will retain a constant velocity unless acted on by an external force (inertia).
So an object that isn’t moving won’t move without an applied force, anything that IS moving will continue in a straight line unless another force acts on it.
If you were to go deep enough into space that there was no gravitational force from a nearby star or other body acting on it and threw an object, it would continue in a straight line with the same velocity until it encountered a body massive enough and close enough to exert sufficient force on it to alter its path.
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