Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Welcome to your Moment of Um from APM Studios. I'm Mainika Wilhelm. Look around you right now.
Everything you see is being held down by the force of gravity. Wait, unless you're listening to this in space, which I would love if you were listening in space, and there's still gravity in space. There's just not as much of it. So stuff might be floating around if you do happen to be listening in space. But I think you're probably not listening in space, which means Earth's gravity has a pretty firm grip on you.
And this idea about gravity is what prompted today's question. Hi, my name is Alex from San Antonio, Texas. My question is, do we have our own gravity? Like how the Earth pulls stuff toward it? That's an awesome question. And the answer is yes. Everything with stuff in it has gravity, which I think is amazing. I'm Cyndia, and I build telescopes that try to study the beginning of the universe. Gravity...
brings things together and it pulls things together across the entire universe.
Everything with stuff has gravity. So you sitting next to your friend, there is a small amount of gravity that pulls you closer together. Even like the smallest bits of grass has gravity. The only reason that we usually can't tell that we have gravity is because the strength of how strongly something pulls due to gravity is based on how far stuff away is and then how big it is.
So the reason that you don't really feel the gravity between you and another person is because the Earth is just so much bigger than anything around us that we experience. And so we only basically feel the gravity of the Earth. And the Earth mostly feels the gravity of the sun because it is so much bigger than everything else. I think one of the craziest things about gravity is that it pulls, but it takes time for gravity
the information about what it's pulling to move across the universe. Nothing in the universe travels faster than the speed of light. The speed of light is kind of like the speed limit to our universe. And so in the same way that light takes time to travel, gravity also takes time to travel. If the sun just disappeared,
not only would we not notice for about eight minutes, because that's how long it takes the light from the sun to get to us. So the light you're seeing now is the light that left the sun eight minutes ago. We also wouldn't notice gravitationally for eight minutes because it takes eight minutes for that information to travel. And so the earth would still be, you know, moving for eight minutes. Um, uh,
I wish I could turn up the strength of my gravitational pull, and I also wish I could focus it on popcorn. How great would that be? I'd be watching a movie, sitting on the couch, and then I'd just raise my hand and turn up my popcorn senses. Bam! Handful of popcorn.
If you liked this episode, take a second to follow Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube. Just search for Brains On. And if you just can't wait to hear more, more, more, check out the Brains On podcast. There's an episode where they looked into the question of what would happen if you dropped a feather in space. It's gravitationally awesome.
If you have a moment of um question, go to brainson.org slash contact and send it our way. We would love to help you answer it. That's brainson.org slash contact. Until next time, um. Is there a teen in your life who needs a little extra help learning how to manage their finances? Financially Inclined from Marketplace is a podcast you can trust to help Gen Z get serious about money.
I'm the host, Janelia Espinal, and each week I talk to experts about essential and practical personal finance topics, like choosing a college that you can actually afford, finding internship opportunities, and how to start a business while you're still young. Let's make sure the next generation gets these financial lessons sooner than we did. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.