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To: AntiGuv

Ok, now I'm going to ask a really dumb question then I'm going to go run away and hide LOL!!

Is there such a thing as up or down in space? Like if bird shot were shot up, if there is such a thing as up in space, would it continue up for all time or would it reach a point where it began to fall? And if it did begin to fall how would it react? Would it, being in a vacume, travle at the same speed on it's way down?


13 posted on 02/28/2005 7:24:48 PM PST by GloriaJane ("How Many Babies Are Crying In Heaven Tonight" http://music.download.com/gloriajane)
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To: GloriaJane
up or down would be relative.

An object thrown from space would continue on into forever. Unless it were dragged into a gravity well. Otherwise even if it were to collide with a rock it would still have momentum. Think of billiards on ice. It would not go up and then fall back. That would only happen from the bottom of a gravity well, ie a planet surface, etc
15 posted on 02/28/2005 7:55:39 PM PST by Wisconsin155 (newbie)
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To: GloriaJane

One could think of space as a miniature golf course. Any large object creates gravity, which then makes a "hole" which things could fall into. If you rolled out an object, it might keep going forever, unless it encountered a hole. We're sitting at the bottom of the Earth's hole, which is why it's so hard to launch things into space (we have to fling rockets out first before they can go anywhere).

When we sent out the Voyager probes, they never encountered any holes (they never got trapped by a planet's gravity and fell to the surface), so they're still going, somewhere out there. When we sent out the Apollo capsules, we flung them at the big gravity hole of the Moon, and they successfully went down it. (And came back up, and then returned and went down the Earth's hole.)


22 posted on 02/28/2005 8:54:14 PM PST by SedVictaCatoni (<><)
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To: GloriaJane
Is there such a thing as up or down in space?

In the Star Trek universe, yes. In the real world, no. Newton's Law (one of them): An object in motion remains in motion; an object at rest remains at rest -- unless acted upon by an outside force. If the bird was in space, travelling without outside interference (like gravity), it would remain moving at its same speed and in the same direction forever.

If, however, you launched your bird from Earth into space, gravity would eventually overcome the forward momentum you applied to the critter, and it would fall back down -- unless you launched it with enough force to escape the effects of gravity. This is called "escape velocity" and on Earth it is on the order of about 11,000 meters (~7 miles) per second.

39 posted on 03/01/2005 1:35:45 PM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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