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The radii of these objects range over three orders of magnitude, from planetary-mass objects like dwarf planets and some moons to the planets and the Sun. This list does not include small Solar System bodies , but it does include a sample of possible planetary-mass objects whose shapes have yet to be determined.
The second major reason for the difference in gravity at different latitudes is that the Earth's equatorial bulge (itself also caused by centrifugal force from rotation) causes objects at the Equator to be further from the planet's center than objects at the poles. The force due to gravitational attraction between two masses (a piece of the ...
To make this into an equal-sided formula or equation, there needed to be a multiplying factor or constant that would give the correct force of gravity no matter the value of the masses or distance between them (the gravitational constant). Newton would need an accurate measure of this constant to prove his inverse-square law.
The table below shows comparative gravitational accelerations at the surface of the Sun, the Earth's moon, each of the planets in the Solar System and their major moons, Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. For gaseous bodies, the "surface" is taken to mean visible surface: the cloud tops of the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and the ...
The gravitational constant is a physical constant that is difficult to measure with high accuracy. [7] This is because the gravitational force is an extremely weak force as compared to other fundamental forces at the laboratory scale. [d] In SI units, the CODATA-recommended value of the gravitational constant is: [1]
In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas ' weight ' [1]) is a fundamental interaction primarily observed as a mutual attraction between all things that have mass.Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 10 38 times weaker than the strong interaction, 10 36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, and 10 29 times weaker than the weak interaction.
The standard gravitational parameter μ of a celestial body is the product of the gravitational constant G and the mass M of that body. For two bodies, the parameter may be expressed as G ( m 1 + m 2 ) , or as GM when one body is much larger than the other: μ = G ( M + m ) ≈ G M . {\displaystyle \mu =G(M+m)\approx GM.}
Gravity is usually measured in units of acceleration.In the SI system of units, the standard unit of acceleration is metres per second squared (m/s 2).Other units include the cgs gal (sometimes known as a galileo, in either case with symbol Gal), which equals 1 centimetre per second squared, and the g (g n), equal to 9.80665 m/s 2.