How does mass have anything to do with gravity?

836 views

I was watching a Vsauce video and learned that any two objects, like two baseballs, are attracted to each other because of their mass, and the bigger the mass, the more gravity an object has. What does mass have to do with gravity, and what causes gravity? Why does something just attract other things around it?

In: Physics

23 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mass = the ability to distort spacetime, the more you distort it the more gravitational pull you will have. They are less ‘attracted to each other’ and more ‘falling into each other’ like a marble circling a drain. The deeper the drain the faster the marble will fall to the middle, the shallower the slower it will fall. The more mass an object has the deeper that drain will be. That is, incidentally, why they call it a gravity ‘well’. Everything has it but when you are talking about something that has the mass of the sun the well is deep and long so planets as far as pluto are caught in it. That is a super-simplified idea but it might get you thinking in a way that makes more sense.

The simplified definition of gravity is the distortion of spacetime and or the result of differing velocities between bodies. GR is hard to teach to a 5 year old but SR isn’t, and that is where you get the idea of gravity really being the result of motion. An accelerating train feels on your back exactly how gravity feels on your feet.

You are viewing 1 out of 23 answers, click here to view all answers.