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A set of equations describing the trajectories of objects subject to a constant gravitational force under normal Earth-bound conditions.Assuming constant acceleration g due to Earth's gravity, Newton's law of universal gravitation simplifies to F = mg, where F is the force exerted on a mass m by the Earth's gravitational field of strength g.
Satellite clocks are slowed by their orbital speed, but accelerated by their distance out of Earth's gravitational well. Gravitational time dilation has been experimentally measured using atomic clocks on airplanes, such as the Hafele–Keating experiment. The clocks aboard the airplanes were slightly faster than clocks on the ground.
The speed of gravity (more correctly, the speed of gravitational waves) can be calculated from observations of the orbital decay rate of binary pulsars PSR 1913+16 (the Hulse–Taylor binary system noted above) and PSR B1534+12. The orbits of these binary pulsars are decaying due to loss of energy in the form of gravitational radiation.
The faster the relative velocity, the greater the time dilation between them, with time slowing to a stop as one clock approaches the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s). In theory, time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to advance into the future in a short period of their own time.
In the Schwarzschild solution, it is assumed that the larger mass M is stationary and it alone determines the gravitational field (i.e., the geometry of space-time) and, hence, the lesser mass m follows a geodesic path through that fixed space-time. This is a reasonable approximation for photons and the orbit of Mercury, which is roughly 6 ...
Newton's law of gravitation resembles Coulomb's law of electrical forces, which is used to calculate the magnitude of the electrical force arising between two charged bodies. Both are inverse-square laws, where force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. Coulomb's law has charge in place of mass and a ...
The curve of fastest descent is not a straight or polygonal line (blue) but a cycloid (red).. In physics and mathematics, a brachistochrone curve (from Ancient Greek βράχιστος χρόνος (brákhistos khrónos) 'shortest time'), [1] or curve of fastest descent, is the one lying on the plane between a point A and a lower point B, where B is not directly below A, on which a bead slides ...
The free-fall time is the characteristic time that would take a body to collapse under its own gravitational attraction, if no other forces existed to oppose the collapse.. As such, it plays a fundamental role in setting the timescale for a wide variety of astrophysical processes—from star formation to helioseismology to supernovae—in which gravity plays a dominant ro