Gravity is a Mystery

Gravity is a Mystery

Suppose you could dig a hole to the center of the earth. Suppose you dug right past the center. If you dug long enough and deep enough, you would come out in the Indian Ocean.

Sir Isaac Newton is the first person credited with discovering the force of gravity and how it kept objects in space (the earth and the moon) in their orbits. His theory is called the law of universal gravitational attraction. The Law of Universal Gravitation The attractive force of gravity between two particles is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

If you jumped into the hole, you would fall down. Down and down you would go. You would fall faster and faster toward the center of the earth. When you reached the center, you would be going so fast you could not stop. You would go right past the center.

Then, on the other side, you would move up and away from the center of the earth. You would fall up for a while. You would go slower and slower. Then you would stop. You would almost get to the Indian Ocean--but not quite.

Now you would fall back toward the center of the earth. You would go faster and faster, right past the center. But you would not quite reach your starting point.