News tagged with gravity
NASA lunar spacecraft GRAIL complete prime mission ahead of schedule
(Phys.org) -- A NASA mission to study the moon from crust to core has completed its prime mission earlier than expected. The team of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, with twin ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
May 29, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
0
CryoSat goes to sea
CryoSat was launched in 2010 to measure sea-ice thickness in the Arctic, but data from the Earth-observing satellite have also been exploited for other studies. High-resolution mapping of the topography of the ocean floor ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 29, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
0
Hubble spies edge-on beauty
(Phys.org) -- Visible in the constellation of Andromeda, NGC 891 is located approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful wide field Advanced ...
May 21, 2012 |
3.4 / 5 (5) |
16
|
Penn astrophysicists zero in on gravity theory
(Phys.org) -- Most people take gravity for granted. But for University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Bhuvnesh Jain, the nature of gravity is the question of a lifetime. As scientists have been able to see ...
May 11, 2012 |
4.4 / 5 (39) |
255
|
VISTA views a vast ball of stars
(Phys.org) -- A new image of Messier 55 from ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope shows tens of thousands of stars crowded together like a swarm of bees. Besides being packed into a relatively small space, ...
May 09, 2012 |
3.7 / 5 (6) |
15
|
Dancing droplets rock out on space station
Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit of NASA has taught more than half a million internet viewers how microgravity affects scientific principles by using everyday objects on the International Space Station. In the latest ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
May 07, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
Landsat satellites see Texas crop circles
(Phys.org) -- A water-rich polka dot pattern takes over the traditional rectangular patchwork of fields in this time series animation of 40 years of Landsat images. In the dry Texas panhandle near the town of Dalhart, this ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 27, 2012 |
3.3 / 5 (3) |
1
First Mars Express gravity results plot volcanic history
(Phys.org) -- Five years of Mars Express gravity mapping data are providing unique insights into what lies beneath the Red Planet’s largest volcanoes. The results show that the lava grew denser over time ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
3
|
Honeybees waggle found to be disturbed by gravity
(Phys.org) -- One of the really cool things about science is how the mundane can suddenly seem not just interesting, but truly fascinating. One great example of this is the bee hive, specifically the honeybee ...
Apr 19, 2012 |
4 / 5 (3) |
4
|
Gravity changes along the Moon
Using detailed topographic information from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, Curtin’s Western Australian School of Mines (WASM) spatial scientists, Dr. Christian Hirt and Professor Will ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 06, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (6) |
2
Earth’s other moons
(PhysOrg.com) -- Earth usually has more than one moon, according to a team of astronomers from the University of Helsinki, the Paris Observatory and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 04, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (34) |
19
|
To boldly go where no glass has gone before
QUT's first foray into space is bound to be a giant step for mankind. Dr Martin Castillo from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Science and Engineering Faculty, and researcher for the university's ...
Mar 30, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (7) |
0
Physicists search for new physics in primordial quantum fluctuations
(PhysOrg.com) -- Inflation, the brief period that occurred less than a second after the Big Bang, is nearly as difficult to fathom as the Big Bang itself. Physicists calculate that inflation lasted for just ...
Mar 26, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (25) |
99
|
NASA releases new moon pics requested by students
(AP) -- A NASA spacecraft in orbit around the moon has sent back five dozen new images of the lunar surface including a view of the far side with Earth in the distance.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 22, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
Exercise has benefits, even when it's done in space
Astronauts have been taking part in short spaceflight missions since 1961. They have only recently begun to spend significantly longer times in space, with missions extending for months, since the days of the Russian Mir ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 22, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
Gravitation
Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another. In everyday life, gravitation is most commonly thought of as the agency which lends weight to objects with mass. Gravitation compels dispersed matter to coalesce, thus accounting for the existence of the Earth, the Sun, and most of the macroscopic objects in the universe. It is responsible for keeping the Earth and the other planets in their orbits around the Sun; for keeping the Moon in its orbit around the Earth; for the formation of tides; for convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a temperature gradient and gravity; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth. Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity, in which gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime which governs the motion of inertial objects. The simpler Newton's law of universal gravitation provides an accurate approximation for most calculations.
The terms gravitation and gravity are mostly interchangeable in everyday use, but a distinction is made in scientific circles. "Gravitation" is a general term describing the phenomenon by which bodies with mass are attracted to one another, while "gravity" refers specifically to the net force exerted by the Earth on objects in its vicinity as well as by other factors, such as the Earth's rotation.
For more information about Gravitation, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
