The barycenter of the earth and moon is outside Earth’s core, but still inside earth. On average (since it changes with mountains and such) about 1707 km deep. So technically earth itself is contently paint trough that point without being ripped appart. The forces are strong enough to move water on earth’s surface though, this is what causes tides in the seas.
Patnou@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
But with that there has to be a point where one or the other is the strongest or weakest? While they probably haven’t lined up or never will but it is safe to assume they will even for a millisecond.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You’re thinking about lagrange points – the places in a (dissimilar?) two-body system where the gravitational pull (and kinetic energy?) from both is equal and thus relatively stable.
Not a physicist, obviously.
Also, be aware that the effect of gravity diminishes with distance. We’re pulled towards the earth at about 9.8m/s/s here on the surface, but as you get further away that 9.8 drops off on an exponential curve.
This gives me a chance to repeat the best argument for why Star Wars is higher tech than Star Trek. When the enterprise gets to a planet they orbit, and the artificial gravity is only an internal issue. In star wars we see gravity shift as ships list due to damage or even fall towards planets, because they aren’t orbiting; they’re just hovering above the planet, presumably with their artificial gravity just working enough to stop the ship itself from falling.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You have to remeber that gravity is actually pretty weak, with exceptions that break our understanding of reality. So gravity can’t usually pull apart the strong nuclear force, which keeps quarks together, at least to my knowledge