- #1
Unteroffizier
- 28
- 3
First off, I'd like to note that I am by no means a physics expert. I am merely a high school student and a physics/maths enthusiast, nothing more, so if my thoughts are completely dysfunctional and downright incorrect, which is more than a distinct possibility, please tell me.
I recently took a class on centripetal force. It was a difficult class for me, as I missed a key lesson, but a few days back I had a thought.
The professor had taught us something about inertia and how objects continue in their path until they are acted upon by another force, one such force (perhaps the most significant in classical mechanics) being gravitational force. He told us that without centripetal force, all objects in all gravitational orbits would (after the information of this change reached them, of course) stray from their paths and continue along a straight line with the velocity they possessed in orbit.
This did initially strike me as odd. Does this not imply that gravitational force relies directly on centripetal force, or the other way around? This is where I could be fundamentally wrong, and as an aspiring scientist (despite my utter stupidity), I have no choice but to accept that reality.
I searched through a few books, had a quick look on the Internet, and realized that in general relativity, gravitational fields around massive objects are represented as this odd well-shaped... Well, for the lack of a better word. Does this not mean that objects in a gravitational field are actually moving along a slope? Objects moving along a (curved, may I add) slope certainly do experience centripetal force, from my understanding, and so could one say that objects in a gravitational field are actually only moving along a very large slope of deformed space (I do not possesses the mathematical skills to understand Gen.R., but I have seen the "deformed space" representation a lot)?
I promise to do the maths later on. I know it only involves mostly some trig and linear equations, more or less, so I will attempt to prove this very unlikely thought whenever I can.
I am so very sorry if you cringe at this whole thing. I want to enjoy doing physics, and that is hard to do this early on with little knowledge in mathematics. I despise pseudoscience, and would hate to render my thoughts exactly that. Please correct every wrong assumption I make.
Edit: Looking at it now, I fail to see how exactly I would calculate an object's orbit. I thought about using circular motion (what we call it in my country), but that fails to take into account the force of gravity. Looking at it now, it seems to me that it could be solved using centripetal force equations.
I'm doing the maths, I'm very tired, I can't get myself to think clearly. Still, if this is true, it only reinforces my belief that gravity may indeed be the same as centripetal force.
Nevermind. It seems that proving this idea would require some thorough knowledge of topology. I do not know how to calculate the slope of curved space, so I suppose my efforts will only be wasted.
I recently took a class on centripetal force. It was a difficult class for me, as I missed a key lesson, but a few days back I had a thought.
The professor had taught us something about inertia and how objects continue in their path until they are acted upon by another force, one such force (perhaps the most significant in classical mechanics) being gravitational force. He told us that without centripetal force, all objects in all gravitational orbits would (after the information of this change reached them, of course) stray from their paths and continue along a straight line with the velocity they possessed in orbit.
This did initially strike me as odd. Does this not imply that gravitational force relies directly on centripetal force, or the other way around? This is where I could be fundamentally wrong, and as an aspiring scientist (despite my utter stupidity), I have no choice but to accept that reality.
I searched through a few books, had a quick look on the Internet, and realized that in general relativity, gravitational fields around massive objects are represented as this odd well-shaped... Well, for the lack of a better word. Does this not mean that objects in a gravitational field are actually moving along a slope? Objects moving along a (curved, may I add) slope certainly do experience centripetal force, from my understanding, and so could one say that objects in a gravitational field are actually only moving along a very large slope of deformed space (I do not possesses the mathematical skills to understand Gen.R., but I have seen the "deformed space" representation a lot)?
I promise to do the maths later on. I know it only involves mostly some trig and linear equations, more or less, so I will attempt to prove this very unlikely thought whenever I can.
I am so very sorry if you cringe at this whole thing. I want to enjoy doing physics, and that is hard to do this early on with little knowledge in mathematics. I despise pseudoscience, and would hate to render my thoughts exactly that. Please correct every wrong assumption I make.
Edit: Looking at it now, I fail to see how exactly I would calculate an object's orbit. I thought about using circular motion (what we call it in my country), but that fails to take into account the force of gravity. Looking at it now, it seems to me that it could be solved using centripetal force equations.
I'm doing the maths, I'm very tired, I can't get myself to think clearly. Still, if this is true, it only reinforces my belief that gravity may indeed be the same as centripetal force.
Nevermind. It seems that proving this idea would require some thorough knowledge of topology. I do not know how to calculate the slope of curved space, so I suppose my efforts will only be wasted.
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