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Succinctly stated, Newton's law of gravitation states that the force on a spherical object of mass due to the gravitational pull of mass is = ^, where is the distance between the two objects' centers of mass and ^ is the unit vector pointed in the direction away from the center of the first object toward the center of the second object.
It is a generalisation of the vector form, which becomes particularly useful if more than two objects are involved (such as a rocket between the Earth and the Moon). For two objects (e.g. object 2 is a rocket, object 1 the Earth), we simply write r instead of r 12 and m instead of m 2 and define the gravitational field g(r) as:
"Science fiction is that form of literature which deals with the effects of technological change in an imagined future, an alternative present or a reconceived history". [38] David Pringle. 1985. "Science fiction is a form of fantastic fiction which exploits the imaginative perspectives of modern science". [39] Kim Stanley Robinson. 1987.
[1] [3] [4] The surface gravity thus becomes billions of times that of the Earth, [1] [2] [4] and it is possible for objects to get close enough to its gravitational center that the tidal force—the difference in pull of gravity experienced by the near and far end of the object—can be equivalent to many thousands or millions of times the ...
The concept of gravity shielding is a common concept in science fiction literature, especially for space travel. One of the first and best known examples is the fictional gravity shielding substance "Cavorite" that appears in H. G. Wells' classic 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon. Wells was promptly criticized for using it by Jules Verne. [3]
Black holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing—including light—can escape them, have been depicted in fiction since at least the pulp era of science fiction, before the term black hole was coined. A common portrayal at the time was of black holes as hazards to spacefarers, a motif that has also recurred in later works.
Water tractor beam. A tractor beam is a device that can attract one object to another from a distance. [1] The concept originates in fiction: The term was coined by E. E. Smith (an update of his earlier "attractor beam") in his novel Spacehounds of IPC (1931).
The Moon's gravitational pull is the main driver of Earth's tides. In geophysical terms, the Moon is a planetary-mass object or satellite planet. Its mass is 1.2% that of the Earth, and its diameter is 3,474 km (2,159 mi), roughly one-quarter of Earth's (about as wide as the contiguous United States).