25 Earth Shattering Facts About Gravity

Gravity is one of the greatest mysteries in science. How does it work? Although we know it exists and can see its effects science has a hard time explaining the exact mechanism. At first we thought we understood it. At least after Newton formulated his laws and we believed we had the universe figured out. But then Einstein came along and completely changed our view of the cosmos and of physics. Since then we have discovered some crazy things about quantum mechanics and how the world works on a microscopic level. Unfortunately, while Newtonian models do a good job of describing things like gravity between large objects, they don't do very well describing forces between atoms. And while Einstein's theory of relativity gives us insight into the microscopic world of the molecule, it doesn't really do a good job in other areas. So it seems that we have several ways of describing the same thing but no real understanding of why or how it works. Over time, numerous theories have been put forth, and most of them have been found lacking. So, although we cannot fully describe it, gravity causes some crazy things to happen. It's not as simple as just pulling things towards each other. Did you know that gravity affects time? These are 25 Earth shattering facts about gravity!
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Because of gravity, humans get the urge to pee when their bladder is about 1/3 full
In space, astronauts don't have the urge to pee until their bladder is basically exploding
Einsteins most revolutionary equation wasn't e=mc2 (unless you are designing nuclear bombs). His most important equation was G = 8 π T, which basically stated that space-time is curved and not flat
Humans could successfully colonize and live on planets with up to 3 times the gravity of Earth. At 4 times the gravity, however, blood flow to the brain would be impaired
Earth's gravitational pull makes it impossible for mountains to be taller than 15km (in theory)
There are regions in space where gravity between the Sun and Earth (or any other two objects) interact to create something called Lagrangian points. Other objects can orbit around these points as if there were something there.
Birds cannot be taken into space because they require gravity to swallow
During the final Apollo 15 moonwalk, David Scott dropped both a feather and a hammer to confirm Galileo's theory that objects fall at the same speed regardless of their mass (on Earth the feather falls more slowly only because of air resistance)
Jupiter is sometimes referred to as a failed star because although it had enough mass to pull in a significant amount of gas, it didn't gain enough to start fusion
Jupiter's gravity will eventually either push Mercury out of the Solar System or send it crashing into the Sun
And more...
Music: Hypnothis by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (/)
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