I will never understand how planets hang in the air

Science & Environment Science & Environment: Chat / Discussions
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Nice amicable sausage appreciation :grin:

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Gravity - the same thing that keeps the Earth in the air.

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How much gravity is there on the moon? one would have had to go there to know that spose :icon_wink:

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Good try but not correct, try again. :grinning:

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Lunar gravity is 1/6 of Earth’s.

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Apparently it would take five moons to stretch across the Pacific Ocean and there would still be gaps.

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super glue ?

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Spider Web?

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Is it? and apparently it’s only 240,000 miles away from Earth, a little gravity doesn’t go very far does it?

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Down?

Air?

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Yes, as in the picture, from the top down to the bottom. :thinking: :slightly_smiling_face:

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Gravity is for folks who don’t like Floating about :icon_wink:

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They just drift around up there because there is nowhere else to go.

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I wonder if celestial bodies swear in English :thinking:

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a-trip-to-the-moon-25881544751200×600 52 KB

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Hi

Basically gravity.

The sun has a huge mass and consequently a huge gravitational pull.

It was there first, the planets are just smaller masses which do not have the speed to escape the suns pull but are too big to be pulled in, so they go round and round the sun.

We do exactly the same with satellites we put into space, many thousands of them, we fire them up there into different heights and then turn them and either speed them up or slow them down

These are what is called geostationary orbit, they stay there.

Some satellites are sent up to do a job, they fall back to earth and are burnt up in the atmosphere when that job is done.

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What if the photo itself is actually upside down?
Also, the term down is typically to explain the difference from higher up to lower - in reference to the ground beneath our feet. You go down hill. You fall down. All in reference to the planet upon which we stand. So if this photo was taken from the earth then “down” is in fact towards us.

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There is no ‘down’ or ‘up’ in space Bretrick
Things just stay where they are put unless they already have a force. That force was when they blew off the sun and flew through space until they reached a distance from the sun when the force ran out and were captured in an orbit around the sun and didn’t have enough force left to resist. I would think that eventually everything will be pulled back into the sun.
First there was chaos and then order
We are currently in a period of order, but it will return to chaos in a few trillion years. No need to worry about it now
 :009:

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That theory formed the basis for all the Chat Up lines :grin: :icon_wink:

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The purchase of an alcoholic beverage and a lift home usually swung it for me Spitty

:+1:

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They don’t hang in the air since there is no air nor do they hang (passive). Instead, they move in fixed, elliptical orbits around the sun at an extremely high speed, held in place by the sun’s gravity and their own motion (active).

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