Earth and Moon Gravity Well Comparison

Earth and Moon gravity well comparison

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• GLXP
• education
• google
• lunar
• xprize
• foundation
• moon
• space
• exploration
• x-prize

[bja6a]

I doubt that humans will be able to take enough material off the moon in the near future to affect the tides or anything else.

[srofficial06]

should we be cautious about "mining" the moon ? Does not the moon and its accompanying gravitational influences provide us earthers with the tides for the oceans and would it be fair to characterize the moon as an integrel " part " of the clockwork that allows us to exist here on earth ? Im not saying you mustnt mine the moon I think however it should be a " balanced" proposition as with any mathematical equation ?

[Scarlov87]

@Atoku0 So it's an abstraction to give an explanation, not a real situation wich many people think that it is, Thankyou :D

[Atoku0]

@Scarlov87 This is the potential. Simply think about them as amount of energy you need to move from the bottom to the plato area.

[Scarlov87]

I can't understand what do the cones mean, are they just a gravity scale right?, sorry about the question

[TJStarfire]

The gravity well theory is deeper than that. A gravity well is also a bottomless pit.

If you could stand at the center of this planet, the mass of the planet would be above you pulling you up. Looking into the realm of gravity, you would see that there is a bottomless pit at the center of every heavenly body.

[Vier5501]

The notion of a gravity well, when dealing with spherical objects, is incorrect. The gravity exerted by one side of the planet is matched almost perfectely by the other side, resulting in a quasi-well structure that resembles a cone in the middle that reaches back to the surface. In retrospect, this is actually true of any object, so gravity wells don't exist, with the notable exception of black holes, and other nigh infinitiley small objects that aren't large enough to have 2 noticable sides.

[Zutraxi]

@nofatchxplzthx This is true gravity will allways try to pull you in but, the power of the pulling is rapidly dissapering as you get further and further away. forexample if you were to suddenly double your distance to the center of earths gravitationel center than the power would be divided by 4 so it will become one fourth of the previous power. Because when you calculate the power of gravity you divide by r^2.

[dresdnhope]

@TimJSwan89 xkcd.com/681_large/ gives the formula [Newton's Gravitation Constant * mass of object]/(earth's gravity at surface * radius of object), where the object is a planet or moon or star or whatev.