• Question: how do you make gravity

    Asked by anon-209704 to Sergio, Nick, Maria, David on 14 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: David Whitworth

      David Whitworth answered on 14 Mar 2019:


      We don’t really make gravity, it is a force that exists within everything. If we want a strong gravitational force we just get more stuff and stick it together. The more matter there is in a ball the bigger the force. Black holes have the greatest gravitational forces we know of as they contain a lot of matter in a very small area, so much that it can trap light and even warp time! The largest black hole we know off we think has the mass of 17 billion suns! But we think they can grow up to 50 billion suns!

    • Photo: Maria Walach

      Maria Walach answered on 14 Mar 2019:


      Gravity is there because things have mass and all masses have a gravitational force associated with them. So everything that has a mass has gravity, even your body or a fly! The heavier or rather massive something is, the higher the gravitational force it has!
      What we don’t really know yet is how this force is communicated to other masses. How does one mass know about the other mass? We don’t know that for sure (though there are theories)!

    • Photo: Nick Werren

      Nick Werren answered on 14 Mar 2019:


      When space is warped by something, it causes all objects around it to be pulled towards the thing warping the space. A bit like if you sat on a trampoline surrounded by tennis balls.
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      The more mass an object has, the more it warps space! So if you wanted to make gravity, then you need to control mass.
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      We don’t know exactly HOW gravity is created, there’s a theory that it’s created by a particle called a Graviton, and then there’s another theory called “quantum loop gravity” that is too complicated to explain here but it basically links quantum mechanics with the warping of space that I mentioned earlier! So don’t worry if none of that makes sense to you, even the greatest scientists out there are still trying to figure this stuff out!!

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