FROM ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS:
Dr. Freire and his colleagues put Einstein to the test in a cosmic laboratory 7,000 light years from earth, where two exotic stars are circling each other.
One, known as a white dwarf, is the cooling remnant of a much lighter star. Its companion is a pulsar, which spins 25 times every second. Though the pulsar is just 12 miles across, it weighs twice as much as the sun.
“When you have such a big mass in such a small space you have extremely high gravity,” said Charles Wang, a theoretical physicist at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The gravity on the pulsar’s surface is 300 billion times as great as the gravity on Earth. The conditions there approach the relentless, overwhelming power of a black hole, which swallows even light.
“We’re testing Einstein’s theory in a region where it has never been tested before,” said Dr. Freire.
The pulsar and white dwarf pair emit gravitational waves and the binary star system gradually loses energy. As a result, the stars will move closer to each other and orbit faster.
Einstein’s theory suggests the stars’ orbital periods—the time they take to go around each other—ought to shrink by about eight-millionths of a second per year.
Dr. Freire’s and his colleagues used several telescopes to take precise measurements about the two-star system. Their results perfectly matched the Einstein-based prediction.
Though Einstein’s framework remains intact so far, “the study is significant for the way observations by astronomers are helping to identify new, extreme cases” to test his general theory of gravity, said Dr. Wang.
A good case has been made for the theory that gavity pushes rather than pulls.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Another interesting phenomenon of physics is that if you look from outer space, you can tell where Michael Moore is by looking for the dent in the earth.
Too heavy for me.
Personally, I try to ignore gravity. Don’t like it, don’t have any use for it.
:: the earth, travels along one path in that distorted space, which we call its orbit ::
Which many folks (including Eistein) ^implied^ is that the Earth could “fly a tangent” at any moment if it weren’t for the laws of gravity.
In “every-man language”, this translates to: If Obama could ignore, repeal or even defund the laws of gravity, the “erff” would go screaming off into the Milky Way to its sure destruction.
All praise be to Obama [piss be upon him!]
I’m willing to bet that it breaks down at the quantum level.
I once heard that the eyes actually take in everything upside-down and the brain automatically turns it “rightside-up”. (shrug) Anyway, that got me to thinking that maybe the entire universe is actually inside-out and our bodies convert it to outside-in the same way. That would explain why everything on earth isn’t tossed off into space by the spinning earth’s centrifugal force. That is, the spinning earth’s centrifugal force is what holds us down.
Or, maybe it’s just becaue of this mysterious “gravity” myth... (chuckle) Yeah right.
bump