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Asked by anon-187767 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 8 Nov 2018.
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Kathryn Coldham answered on 8 Nov 2018:
Gravity is a force that causes for all objects with mass to attract together. One way to visualise it is to imagine that space-time is like a big, stretched-out blanket. If you put a ball onto the blanket, the ball’s mass would cause for the blanket to curve underneath it. So space-time is like the blanket while the planets and stars are like the ball. So an object with more mass will cause for the curvature of space time to be greater around that object, so the gravitational force of attraction is stronger.
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Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 8 Nov 2018:
Gravity is a force: it pulls things together based on their mass. It pulls us towards the Earth and keeps the Earth orbiting around the Sun.
It might seem strong, but that’s only because the Earth is huge. Compared to the electromagnetic force (electricity, magnets etc), it’s really weak. Another thing that’s different – magnets can repel, but gravity can only attract. It’s not known if there’s a type of matter that would be repelled by normal matter, like two north poles on magnets.
Finally, we don’t know how gravity fits together with the other forces. When we try to calculate things in the same way, the answer is always infinity. So we need a new way of calculating, or a new theory that says gravity behaves a bit differently.
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Miriam Hogg answered on 11 Nov 2018:
Gravity is a force that affects anything with mass, attracting it together.
It’s the weakest of the four forces but its the the one that forms stars and planets and holds galaxies together!
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