Comment on Is the moon tied up in the earth's gravitational pull at the very least? Or do both pulls match at some point to circle the earth?

<- View Parent
Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

That’s not really how gravity works. As you move closer to one object, the balance of gravitational forces will shift. If you move away from the earth and toward the moon, you’re going to eventually be pulled equally by both, leading to zero acceleration toward either.

In order for something to be pulled apart by two different gravitational forces, you’d need to be able to have a massive change in gravity over the distance of that object. For something planetary sized, this might be possible, but for anything on the scale of a human, you’d need something like a black hole event horizon to get enough of a force gradient to do damage.

Gravity is actually a pretty weak force compared to almost all other basic forces, and it doesn’t often get “concentrated” like other forces can.

If the moon-earth gravitational system was able to generate enough force to rip something apart at some specific point, space travel would certainly be a lot more interesting/daunting.

source
Sort:hotnewtop