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Gravitational biology is the study of the effects gravity has on living organisms. Throughout the history of the Earth life has evolved to survive changing conditions, such as changes in the climate and habitat. However, one constant factor in evolution since life first began on Earth is the force of gravity.
Gravitation also explains astronomical phenomena on more modest scales, such as planetary orbits, as well as everyday experience: objects fall; heavy objects act as if they were glued to the ground, and animals can only jump so high. Gravitation was the first interaction to be described mathematically.
Gravitaxis (or geotaxis [1]) is a form of taxis characterized by the directional movement of an organism in response to gravity. [2] There are a few different causes for gravitaxis. Many microorganisms have receptors like statocysts that allow them to sense the direction of gravity and to adjust their orientation accordingly. However ...
Before Newton's law of gravity, there were many theories explaining gravity. Philoshophers made observations about things falling down − and developed theories why they do – as early as Aristotle who thought that rocks fall to the ground because seeking the ground was an essential part of their nature. [6]
A wheeled buffalo figurine—probably a children's toy—from Magna Graecia in archaic Greece [1]. Several organisms are capable of rolling locomotion. However, true wheels and propellers—despite their utility in human vehicles—do not play a significant role in the movement of living things (with the exception of the corkscrew-like flagella of many prokaryotes).
In general, their ground states tend towards a prolate shape, [33] although experimental data hint at oblate ground-state shapes in certain nuclei, for example krypton-72. [34] Experiments also suggest that some heavy nuclei, such as barium-144 and radium-224, possess asymmetric pear shapes evidenced by their measured octupole moments.
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is the work that an outside agent must do in order to quasi-statically bring the masses together (which is therefore, exactly opposite the work done by the gravitational field on the masses): = = where is the displacement vector of the mass, is gravitational force acting on it and denotes scalar product.
Nucleosynthesis is the process that creates new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons (protons and neutrons) and nuclei. According to current theories, the first nuclei were formed a few minutes after the Big Bang , through nuclear reactions in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis . [ 1 ]