accereration 101

Your questions are not at all stupid but they are hard to comprehend and or answer. One thing I'm sure you will not get an answer to is your question of why gravity does what it does. It causes mass to accelerate but no one knows why this is so.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[kd]: can anyone tell me why gravity <b>accelerates</b> an object at all?<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

This is the subject of the new book <i>Pushing Gravity</i>, available at this site's store (among other places). To summarize a whole book in a sentence, a universal flux of "gravitons" causes the apple to fall because more gravitons strike the apple from above than from below because the Earth shields the apple from some graviton impacts from below.

You'll find much more about this in other topics on this Message Board. -|Tom|-

"To summarize a whole book in a sentence, a universal flux of "gravitons" causes the apple to fall because more gravitons strike the apple from above than from below because the Earth shields the apple from some graviton impacts from below."

I was getting some lunch at the park cross the street the other day and I saw a young child letting a ballon free. The ballon gained height really fast. I am wondering:

1. Isn't the ballon + air in it heavier than just the empty ballon?
2. If an empty, non inflated ballon, always falls to the ground, why an inflated ballon goes sky high? (even in a dark room with no wind)
3. I gravity is due to a graviton flux is would make sense that very large and flat objects are receiving more gravitons than small objects having the same mass and should accelerate faster due to momentum exchange.

Any thoughts from the "graviton experts"?

See "Is anti-gravity a bunch of hot air" in the "Gravity and Relativity" category. We covered balloons earlier. -|Tom|-

Why does the object not just fall at a constant velocity once the initial acceleration has been achieved? Acceleration in a gravity field does not start and stop. Acceleration increases or decreases velocity depending on the direction of the object being accelerated. This continues as long as the field exists and the object is not perturbed.

Jim...
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Acceleration in a gravity field does not start and stop. Acceleration increases or decreases velocity depending on the direction of the object being accelerated.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

So an object dropped from a considerable height and headed toward the earth will increase and decrease its acceleration but never slow down in its current velocity?

My question was why the constant acceleration at all and in a hypothetical situation if a gravity field existed but the earth did not then would the falling object keep accelerating or would it stop accelerating once a final speed is reached i.e. speed of graviton flow?

Obviously because the earth is the cause of gravitation and its presence stops any falling object we can only theorize on what would happen.

dave

cheers