The law of universal gravitation. Dependence of the acceleration of free falling bodies on geographic latitude

So, the movement of planets, for example the Moon around the Earth or the Earth around the Sun, is the same fall, but only a fall that lasts indefinitely (in any case, if we ignore the transition of energy into “non-mechanical” forms).

The conjecture about the unity of causes governing the movement of planets and the fall of earthly bodies was expressed by scientists long before Newton. Apparently, the first to clearly express this idea was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, a native of Asia Minor, who lived in Athens almost two thousand years ago. He said that the Moon, if it did not move, would fall to the Earth.

However, Anaxagoras’s brilliant guess, apparently, did not have any practical impact on the development of science. She was destined to be misunderstood by her contemporaries and forgotten by her descendants. Ancient and medieval thinkers, whose attention was attracted by the movement of the planets, were very far from the correct (and more often than not any) interpretation of the causes of this movement. After all, even the great Kepler, who, at the cost of enormous labor, was able to formulate the exact mathematical laws of planetary motion, believed that the cause of this motion was the rotation of the Sun.

According to Kepler's ideas, the Sun, rotating, constantly pushes the planets into rotation. True, it remained unclear why the time of revolution of the planets around the Sun differs from the period of revolution of the Sun around its own axis. Kepler wrote about this: “if the planets did not have natural resistance, then it would be impossible to give reasons why they should not follow exactly the rotation of the Sun. But although in reality all the planets move in the same direction in which the rotation of the Sun occurs, the speed of their movement is not the same. The fact is that they mix, in certain proportions, the inertia of their own mass with the speed of their movement.”

Kepler failed to understand that the coincidence of the directions of motion of the planets around the Sun with the direction of rotation of the Sun around its axis is not associated with the laws of planetary motion, but with the origin of our solar system. An artificial planet can be launched both in the direction of rotation of the Sun and against this rotation.

Robert Hooke came much closer than Kepler to the discovery of the law of attraction of bodies. Here are his actual words from a work entitled An Attempt to Study the Motion of the Earth, published in 1674: “I will develop a theory which is in every respect consistent with the generally accepted rules of mechanics. This theory is based on three assumptions: firstly, that all celestial bodies, without exception, have a gravity directed towards their center, due to which they attract not only their own parts, but also all celestial bodies within their sphere of action. According to the second assumption, all bodies moving in a rectilinear and uniform manner will move in a straight line until they are deflected by some force and begin to describe trajectories in a circle, an ellipse, or some other less simple curve. According to the third assumption, the forces of attraction act the more strongly, the closer to them the bodies on which they act are located. I have not yet been able to establish by experience what the different degrees of attraction are. But if we develop this idea further, astronomers will be able to determine the law according to which all celestial bodies move.”

Truly, one can only be amazed that Hooke himself did not want to engage in the development of these ideas, citing being busy with other work. But a scientist appeared who made a breakthrough in this area

The history of Newton's discovery of the law of universal gravitation is quite well known. For the first time, the idea that the nature of the forces that make a stone fall and determine the movement of celestial bodies is the same arose with Newton the student, that the first calculations did not give the correct results, since the data available at that time on the distance from the Earth to the Moon were inaccurate, that 16 years later new, corrected information about this distance appeared. To explain the laws of planetary motion, Newton applied the laws of dynamics he created and the law of universal gravitation that he himself established.

He named the Galilean principle of inertia as the first law of dynamics, including it in the system of basic laws-postulates of his theory.

At the same time, Newton had to eliminate the mistake of Galileo, who believed that uniform motion in a circle was motion by inertia. Newton pointed out (and this is the second law of dynamics) that the only way to change the motion of a body - the value or direction of the velocity - is to act on it with some force. In this case, the acceleration with which a body moves under the influence of a force is inversely proportional to the mass of the body.

According to Newton's third law of dynamics, “to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”

Consistently applying the principles - the laws of dynamics, he first calculated the centripetal acceleration of the Moon as it moves in orbit around the Earth, and then was able to show that the ratio of this acceleration to the acceleration of free fall of bodies at the Earth's surface is equal to the ratio of the squares of the radii of the Earth and the lunar orbit. From this Newton concluded that the nature of gravity and the force that holds the Moon in orbit are the same. In other words, according to his conclusions, the Earth and the Moon are attracted to each other with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers Fg ≈ 1∕r2.

Newton was able to show that the only explanation for the independence of the acceleration of free fall of bodies from their mass is the proportionality of the force of gravity to the mass.

Summarizing the findings, Newton wrote: “there can be no doubt that the nature of gravity on other planets is the same as on Earth. In fact, let us imagine that the earth's bodies are raised to the orbit of the Moon and sent together with the Moon, also devoid of any movement, to fall to the Earth. Based on what has already been proven (meaning the experiments of Galileo), there is no doubt that at the same times they will pass through the same spaces as the Moon, for their masses are related to the mass of the Moon in the same way as their weights are to its weight.” So Newton discovered and then formulated the law of universal gravitation, which is rightfully the property of science.

2. Properties of gravitational forces.

One of the most remarkable properties of the forces of universal gravitation, or, as they are often called, gravitational forces, is reflected in the very name given by Newton: universal. These forces, so to speak, are the “most universal” among all the forces of nature. Everything that has mass - and mass is inherent in any form, any kind of matter - must experience gravitational influences. Even light is no exception. If we visualize gravitational forces with the help of strings that stretch from one body to another, then an innumerable number of such strings would have to permeate space anywhere. At the same time, it is worth noting that it is impossible to break such a thread and protect yourself from gravitational forces. There are no barriers to universal gravity; their radius of action is unlimited (r = ∞). Gravitational forces are long-range forces. This is the “official name” of these forces in physics. Due to long-range action, gravity connects all bodies of the Universe.

The relative slowness of the decrease in forces with distance at each step is manifested in our earthly conditions: after all, all bodies do not change their weight when transferred from one height to another (or, to be more precise, they change, but extremely insignificantly), precisely because with a relatively small change in distance - in this case from the center of the Earth - gravitational forces practically do not change.

By the way, it was for this reason that the law of measuring gravitational forces with distance was discovered “in the sky.” All the necessary data was drawn from astronomy. One should not, however, think that a decrease in gravity with height cannot be detected under terrestrial conditions. So, for example, a pendulum clock with an oscillation period of one second will fall behind a day by almost three seconds if it is raised from the basement to the top floor of Moscow University (200 meters) - and this is only due to a decrease in gravity.

The altitudes at which artificial satellites move are already comparable to the radius of the Earth, so to calculate their trajectory, taking into account the change in the force of gravity with distance is absolutely necessary.

Gravitational forces have another very interesting and unusual property, which will be discussed now.

For many centuries, medieval science accepted as an unshakable dogma Aristotle's statement that a body falls the faster the greater its weight. Even everyday experience confirms this: it is known that a piece of fluff falls slower than a stone. However, as Galileo was able to show for the first time, the whole point here is that air resistance, coming into play, radically distorts the picture that would be if only earthly gravity acted on all bodies. There is a remarkable experiment with the so-called Newton tube, which makes it possible to very easily evaluate the role of air resistance. Here is a short description of this experience. Imagine an ordinary glass tube (so that you can see what is happening inside) in which various objects are placed: pellets, pieces of cork, feathers or fluffs, etc. If you turn the tube over so that all this can fall, then the pellet will flash faster , followed by pieces of cork and, finally, the fluff will gradually fall. But let’s try to monitor the fall of the same objects when the air is pumped out of the tube. The fluff, having lost its former slowness, rushes along, keeping pace with the pellet and the cork. This means that its movement was delayed by air resistance, which had a lesser effect on the movement of the plug and even less on the movement of the pellet. Consequently, if it were not for air resistance, if only the forces of universal gravity acted on bodies - in a particular case, gravity - then all bodies would fall exactly the same, accelerating at the same pace.

But “there is nothing new under the sun.” Two thousand years ago, Lucretius Carus wrote in his famous poem “On the Nature of Things”:

everything that falls in rare air,

Should fall faster according to its own weight

Only because water or air is a subtle essence

I am not able to put obstacles in the way of things that are the same,

But it is more likely to yield to those with greater severity.

On the contrary, I am never capable of anything anywhere

The thing holds the emptiness and appears as some kind of support,

By nature, constantly giving in to everything.

Therefore, everything, rushing through the void without obstacles,

Have the same speed despite the difference in weight.

Of course, these wonderful words were a great guess. To turn this guess into a reliably established law, it took many experiments, starting with the famous experiments of Galileo, who studied the fall of balls of the same size, but made of different materials (marble, wood, lead, etc.) from the famous leaning Leaning Tower of Pisa, and ending with the most sophisticated modern measurements of the influence of gravity on light. And all this variety of experimental data persistently strengthens us in the belief that gravitational forces impart equal acceleration to all bodies; in particular, the acceleration of free fall caused by gravity is the same for all bodies and does not depend on the composition, structure, or mass of the bodies themselves.

This seemingly simple law expresses perhaps the most remarkable feature of gravitational forces. There are literally no other forces that accelerate all bodies equally, regardless of their mass.

So, this property of the forces of universal gravity can be compressed into one short statement: the gravitational force is proportional to the mass of bodies. Let us emphasize that here we are talking about the very mass that acts as a measure of inertia in Newton’s laws. It is even called inert mass.

The four words “gravitational force is proportional to mass” contain a surprisingly deep meaning. Large and small bodies, hot and cold, of very different chemical compositions, of any structure - they all experience the same gravitational interaction if their masses are equal.

Or maybe this law is really simple? After all, Galileo, for example, considered it almost self-evident. Here is his reasoning. Let two bodies of different weights fall. According to Aristotle, a heavy body should fall faster even in vacuum. Now let's connect the bodies. Then, on the one hand, the bodies should fall faster, since the total weight has increased. But, on the other hand, adding a part to a heavy body that falls more slowly should slow down this body. There is a contradiction that can be eliminated only if we assume that all bodies under the influence of gravity alone fall with the same acceleration. It's like everything is consistent! However, let us think again about the above reasoning. It is based on the common method of proof “by contradiction”: by assuming that a heavier body falls faster than a lighter one, we have arrived at a contradiction. And from the very beginning there was an assumption that the acceleration of free fall is determined by weight and only weight. (Strictly speaking, not by weight, but by mass.)

But this is not at all obvious in advance (i.e., before the experiment). What if this acceleration was determined by the volume of the bodies? Or temperature? Let's imagine that there is a gravitational charge, similar to an electric charge and, like the latter, completely unrelated directly to mass. The comparison with electric charge is very useful. Here are two specks of dust between the charged plates of a capacitor. Let these dust grains have equal charges, and the masses are in the ratio 1 to 2. Then the accelerations should differ by a factor of two: the forces determined by the charges are equal, and with equal forces, a body with twice the mass accelerates half as much. If you connect dust particles, then, obviously, the acceleration will have a new, intermediate value. No speculative approach without an experimental study of electrical forces can give anything here. The picture would be exactly the same if the gravitational charge were not associated with mass. But only experience can answer the question of whether such a connection exists. And we now understand that it was the experiments that proved the identical acceleration due to gravity for all bodies that essentially showed that the gravitational charge (gravitational or heavy mass) is equal to the inertial mass.

Experience and only experience can serve both as a basis for physical laws and as a criterion for their validity. Let us at least recall the record-breaking precision experiments conducted under the leadership of V.B. Braginsky at Moscow State University. These experiments, in which an accuracy of about 10-12 was obtained, once again confirmed the equality of heavy and inert mass.

It is on experience, on the wide testing of nature - from the modest scale of a small laboratory of a scientist to the grandiose cosmic scale - that the law of universal gravitation is based, which (to summarize everything said above) says:

The force of mutual attraction of any two bodies whose dimensions are much smaller than the distance between them is proportional to the product of the masses of these bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between these bodies.

The proportionality coefficient is called the gravitational constant. If we measure length in meters, time in seconds, and mass in kilograms, the gravitational force will always be equal to 6.673*10-11, and its dimension will be m3/kg*s2 or N*m2/kg2, respectively.

G=6.673*10-11 N*m2/kg2

3. Gravitational waves.

Newton's law of universal gravitation does not say anything about the time of transmission of gravitational interaction. It is implicitly assumed that it occurs instantly, no matter how large the distances between the interacting bodies are. This view is generally typical of supporters of action at a distance. But from Einstein’s “special theory of relativity” it follows that gravity is transmitted from one body to another at the same speed as the light signal. If some body moves from its place, then the curvature of space and time caused by it does not change instantly. First, this will affect the immediate vicinity of the body, then the change will affect more and more distant areas, and, finally, a new distribution of curvature will be established throughout space, corresponding to the changed position of the body.

And here we come to the problem that has caused and continues to cause the greatest number of disputes and disagreements - the problem of gravitational radiation.

Can gravity exist if there is no mass creating it? According to Newton's law, definitely not. It makes no sense to even raise such a question there. However, as soon as we agreed that gravitational signals are transmitted, although at a very high, but still not infinite speed, everything changes radically. Indeed, imagine that at first the mass causing gravity, for example a ball, was at rest. All bodies around the ball will be affected by ordinary Newtonian forces. Now let’s remove the ball from its original place with great speed. At first, the surrounding bodies will not feel this. After all, gravitational forces do not change instantly. It takes time for changes in the curvature of space to spread in all directions. This means that the surrounding bodies will experience the same influence of the ball for some time, when the ball itself is no longer there (at least, in the same place).

It turns out that the curvatures of space acquire a certain independence, that it is possible to tear a body out of the area of ​​space where it caused the curvatures, and in such a way that these curvatures themselves, at least over large distances, will remain and develop according to their own internal laws. Here is gravity without gravitating mass! We can go further. If you make the ball oscillate, then, as it turns out from Einstein’s theory, a kind of ripple is superimposed on the Newtonian picture of gravity - gravitational waves. To better imagine these waves, you need to use a model - a rubber film. If you not only press your finger on this film, but simultaneously make oscillatory movements with it, then these vibrations will begin to be transmitted along the stretched film in all directions. This is an analogue of gravitational waves. The further away from the source, the weaker such waves are.

And now at some point we will stop putting pressure on the film. The waves won't go away. They will exist independently, scattering further and further across the film, causing geometry to bend along the way.

In exactly the same way, waves of space curvature - gravitational waves - can exist independently. Many researchers draw this conclusion from Einstein’s theory.

Of course, all these effects are very weak. For example, the energy released when one match burns is many times greater than the energy of gravitational waves emitted by our entire solar system during the same time. But what is important here is not the quantitative, but the principled side of the matter.

Proponents of gravitational waves - and they seem to be in the majority now - predict another amazing phenomenon; the transformation of gravity into particles such as electrons and positrons (they must be born in pairs), protons, antitrons, etc. (Ivanenko, Wheeler, etc.).

It should look something like this. A wave of gravity reached a certain area of ​​space. At a certain moment, this gravity sharply, abruptly, decreases and at the same time, say, an electron-positron pair appears there. The same can be described as an abrupt decrease in the curvature of space with the simultaneous birth of a pair.

There are many attempts to translate this into quantum mechanical language. Particles are introduced into consideration - gravitons, which are compared to the non-quantum image of a gravitational wave. In the physical literature, the term “transmutation of gravitons into other particles” is in circulation, and these transmutations - mutual transformations - are possible between gravitons and, in principle, any other particles. After all, there are no particles that are insensitive to gravity.

Even though such transformations are unlikely, that is, they happen extremely rarely, on a cosmic scale they can turn out to be fundamental.

4. Curvature of space-time by gravity,

"Eddington's Parable"

A parable by the English physicist Eddington from the book “Space, Time and Gravity” (retelling):

“In an ocean that has only two dimensions, there once lived a breed of flat fish. It was observed that the fish generally swam in straight lines as long as they did not encounter obvious obstacles in their path. This behavior seemed quite natural. But there was a mysterious area in the ocean; when the fish fell into it, they seemed enchanted; some sailed through this area but changed the direction of their movement, others endlessly circled around this area. One fish (almost Descartes) proposed a theory of vortices; she said that in this area there are whirlpools that make everything that gets into them spin. Over time, a much more advanced theory was proposed (Newton's theory); they said that all fish are attracted to a very large fish - the sun fish, dormant in the middle of the region - and this explained the deviation of their paths. At first this theory seemed perhaps a little strange; but it was confirmed with amazing accuracy by a wide variety of observations. All fish have been found to have this attractive property, proportionate to their size; the law of attraction (analogous to the law of universal gravitation) was extremely simple, but despite this, it explained all movements with such precision that the accuracy of scientific research had never reached before. True, some fish, grumbling, declared that they did not understand how such an action at a distance was possible; but everyone agreed that this action was carried out by the ocean, and that it would be easier to understand when the nature of water was better studied. Therefore, almost every fish that wanted to explain gravity began by suggesting some mechanism by which it spread through water.

But there was a fish who looked at things differently. She noticed the fact that the big fish and the small ones always moved along the same paths, although it might seem that it would take a lot of force to deflect the big fish from its path. (The sunfish imparted equal accelerations to all bodies.) Therefore, instead of trying, she began to study in detail the paths of movement of fish and thus came to an astonishing solution to the problem. There was a high place in the world where the sunfish lay. The fish could not directly notice this because they were two-dimensional; but when the fish in its movement fell on the slope of this elevation, then although it tried to swim in a straight line, it involuntarily turned a little to the side. This was the secret of the mysterious attraction or curvature of paths that occurred in the mysterious area. »

This parable shows how the curvature of the world in which we live can give the illusion of gravity, and we see that an effect like gravity is the only way such curvature can manifest itself.

Briefly, this can be formulated as follows. Since gravity bends the paths of all bodies in the same way, we can think of gravity as the curvature of space-time.

5. Gravity on Earth.

If you think about the role that gravitational forces play in the life of our planet, entire oceans open up. And not only oceans of phenomena, but also oceans in the literal sense of the word. Oceans of water. Air ocean. Without gravity they would not exist.

A wave in the sea, the movement of every drop of water in the rivers that feed this sea, all currents, all winds, clouds, the entire climate of the planet are determined by the play of two main factors: solar activity and gravity.

Gravity not only holds people, animals, water and air on Earth, but also compresses them. This compression at the Earth's surface is not so great, but its role is important.

The ship is sailing on the sea. What prevents him from drowning is known to everyone. This is the famous buoyant force of Archimedes. But it appears only because the water is compressed by gravity with a force that increases with increasing depth. Inside a spacecraft in flight, there is no buoyant force, and there is no weight either. The globe itself is compressed by gravitational forces to colossal pressures. At the center of the Earth, the pressure appears to exceed 3 million atmospheres.

Under the influence of long-acting pressure forces under these conditions, all substances that we are accustomed to consider solid behave like pitch or resin. Heavy materials sink to the bottom (if you can call the center of the Earth that way), and light materials float to the surface. This process has been going on for billions of years. It has not ended, as follows from Schmidt’s theory, even now. The concentration of heavy elements in the region of the Earth's center is slowly increasing.

Well, how does the attraction of the Sun and the closest celestial body of the Moon manifest itself on Earth? Only residents of the ocean coasts can observe this attraction without special instruments.

The sun acts in almost the same way on everything on and inside the Earth. The force with which the Sun attracts a person at noon, when he is closest to the Sun, is almost no different from the force acting on him at midnight. After all, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is ten thousand times greater than the Earth’s diameter, and an increase in the distance by one ten-thousandth when the Earth rotates half a turn around its axis practically does not change the force of gravity. Therefore, the Sun imparts almost identical accelerations to all parts of the globe and all bodies on its surface. Almost, but still not quite the same. Because of this difference, the ebb and flow of the ocean occurs.

On the section of the earth's surface facing the Sun, the force of gravity is somewhat greater than that necessary for the movement of this section along an elliptical orbit, and on the opposite side of the Earth it is somewhat less. As a result, according to Newton's laws of mechanics, the water in the ocean bulges slightly in the direction facing the Sun, and on the opposite side it recedes from the Earth's surface. Tidal forces, as they say, arise, stretching the globe and giving, roughly speaking, the surface of the oceans the shape of an ellipsoid.

The smaller the distances between interacting bodies, the greater the tidal forces. This is why the Moon has a greater influence on the shape of the world's oceans than the Sun. More precisely, tidal influence is determined by the ratio of the mass of a body to the cube of its distance from the Earth; this ratio for the Moon is approximately twice that for the Sun.

If there were no cohesion between the parts of the globe, then tidal forces would tear it apart.

Perhaps this happened to one of Saturn's satellites when it came close to this large planet. That fragmented ring that makes Saturn such a remarkable planet may be debris from the satellite.

So, the surface of the world's oceans is like an ellipsoid, the major axis of which faces the Moon. The earth rotates around its axis. Therefore, a tidal wave moves along the surface of the ocean towards the direction of rotation of the Earth. When it approaches the shore, the tide begins. In some places the water level rises to 18 meters. Then the tidal wave goes away and the tide begins to ebb. The water level in the ocean fluctuates, on average, with a period of 12 hours. 25min. (half a lunar day).

This simple picture is greatly distorted by the simultaneous tidal action of the Sun, water friction, continental resistance, the complexity of the configuration of ocean shores and bottom in coastal zones, and some other particular effects.

It is important that the tidal wave slows down the Earth's rotation.

True, the effect is very small. Over 100 years, the day increases by a thousandth of a second. But, acting for billions of years, the braking forces will lead to the fact that the Earth will always be turned to the Moon with one side, and the Earth’s day will become equal to the lunar month. This has already happened to Luna. The Moon is slowed down so much that it always faces the Earth with one side. To “look” at the far side of the Moon, it was necessary to send a spacecraft around it.

Not only the most mysterious of forces of nature, but also the most powerful.

Man on the path of progress

Historically it turned out that Human as it moves forward ways of progress mastered the increasingly powerful forces of nature. He started when he had nothing but a stick clutched in his fist and his own physical strength.

But he was wise, and he brought the physical strength of animals into his service, making them domesticated. The horse sped up his run, the camel made the desert passable, the elephant made the swampy jungle. But the physical strength of even the strongest animals is immeasurably small compared to the forces of nature.

Man was the first to subjugate the element of fire, but only in its most weakened versions. At first - for many centuries - he used only wood as fuel - a very low-energy type of fuel. Somewhat later, he learned to use this source of energy to use the energy of the wind, the man raised the white wing of the sail into the air - and the light ship flew like a bird across the waves.

Sailboat on the waves

He exposed the windmill blades to the gusts of wind - and the heavy stones of the millstones began to spin, and the pestles of the grinders began to rattle. But it is clear to everyone that the energy of air jets is far from being concentrated. In addition, both the sail and the windmill were afraid of the blows of the wind: the storm tore the sails and sank the ships, the storm broke the wings and overturned the mills.

Even later, man began to conquer flowing water. The wheel is not only the most primitive of devices capable of converting the energy of water into rotational motion, but also the least powerful in comparison with various types.

Man walked ever forward along the ladder of progress and needed more and more energy.
He began to use new types of fuel - already the transition to burning coal increased the energy intensity of a kilogram of fuel from 2500 kcal to 7000 kcal - almost three times. Then the time came for oil and gas. The energy content of each kilogram of fossil fuel has again increased by one and a half to two times.

Steam engines replaced steam turbines; mill wheels were replaced by hydraulic turbines. Next, the man extended his hand to the fissioning uranium atom. However, the first use of a new type of energy had tragic consequences - the nuclear fire of Hiroshima in 1945 incinerated 70 thousand human hearts within a matter of minutes.

In 1954, the world's first Soviet nuclear power plant came online, turning the power of uranium into the radiant force of electric current. And it should be noted that a kilogram of uranium contains two million times more energy than a kilogram of the best oil.

This was a fundamentally new fire, which could be called physical, because it was physicists who studied the processes leading to the birth of such fabulous amounts of energy.
Uranium is not the only nuclear fuel. A more powerful type of fuel is already being used - hydrogen isotopes.

Unfortunately, man has not yet been able to subjugate the hydrogen-helium nuclear flame. He knows how to momentarily light his all-burning fire, igniting the reaction in the hydrogen bomb with a flash of uranium explosion. But scientists are also seeing a hydrogen reactor getting closer and closer, which will generate an electric current as a result of the fusion of nuclei of hydrogen isotopes into helium nuclei.

Again, the amount of energy that a person can take from each kilogram of fuel will increase almost tenfold. But will this step be the last in the coming history of mankind’s power over the forces of nature?

No! Ahead is mastering the gravitational form of energy. It is even more prudently packaged by nature than even the energy of hydrogen-helium fusion. Today this is the most concentrated form of energy that a person can even imagine.

Nothing further is yet visible there, beyond the cutting edge of science. And although we can confidently say that power plants will work for humans, converting gravitational energy into electric current (and perhaps into a stream of gas escaping from the nozzle of a jet engine, or into the planned transformation of the ubiquitous atoms of silicon and oxygen into atoms of ultra-rare metals), We cannot yet say anything about the details of such a power plant (rocket engine, physical reactor).

The force of universal gravitation at the origins of the birth of Galaxies

The force of universal gravitation is at the origins of the birth of galaxies from prestellar matter, as Academician V.A. Ambartsumyan is convinced of. It extinguishes stars that have burned out their time, having used up the stellar fuel they were given at birth.

Look around you: everything here on Earth is largely controlled by this force.

It is this that determines the layered structure of our planet - the alternation of lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. It is she who holds a thick layer of air gases, at the bottom of which and thanks to which we all exist.

Without gravity, the Earth would immediately fall out of its orbit around the Sun, and the globe itself would fall apart, torn apart by centrifugal forces. It is difficult to find anything that would not be, to one degree or another, dependent on the force of universal gravity.

Of course, the ancient philosophers, very observant people, could not help but notice that a stone thrown upward always comes back. Plato in the 4th century BC explained this by saying that all the substances of the Universe tend to where most of the similar substances are concentrated: a thrown stone falls to the ground or goes to the bottom, spilled water seeps into the nearest pond or into a river making its way to the sea , the smoke of the fire rushes towards its kindred clouds.

Plato's student, Aristotle, clarified that all bodies have special properties of heaviness and lightness. Heavy bodies - stones, metals - rush to the center of the Universe, light bodies - fire, smoke, vapors - to the periphery. This hypothesis, which explains some phenomena associated with the force of universal gravity, has existed for more than 2 thousand years.

Scientists about the force of universal gravity

Probably the first to raise the question about force of universal gravity truly scientifically, there was a genius of the Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo proclaimed that gravity is not unique to the Earth, that there are many centers of gravity. And he also expressed the idea that the force of gravity depends on the distance to the center of gravity.

The works of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Robert Hooke brought closer and closer to the idea of ​​the law of universal gravitation, but in its final formulation this law is forever associated with the name of Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton on the force of universal gravitation

Born January 4, 1643. He graduated from Cambridge University, became a bachelor, then a master of science.

Everything that follows is an endless wealth of scientific work. But his main work is “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” published in 1687 and usually called simply “Principles.” It is in them that the great is formulated. Probably everyone remembers him from high school.

All bodies attract each other with a force directly proportional to the product of the masses of these bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them...

Some of the provisions of this formulation were able to anticipate Newton's predecessors, but no one had ever succeeded in achieving it in its entirety. It took the genius of Newton to assemble these fragments into a single whole in order to extend the gravity of the Earth to the Moon, and the Sun to the entire planetary system.

From the law of universal gravitation, Newton deduced all the laws of planetary motion previously discovered by Kepler. They turned out to be simply its consequences. Moreover, Newton showed that not only Kepler’s laws, but also deviations from these laws (in the world of three or more bodies) are a consequence of universal gravity... This was a great triumph of science.

It seemed that the main force of nature that moves the worlds had finally been discovered and mathematically described, a force that controls air molecules, apples, and the Sun. The step taken by Newton was gigantic, immeasurably huge.

The first popularizer of the works of the brilliant scientist, the French writer François Marie Arouet, world-famous under the pseudonym Voltaire, said that Newton suddenly realized the existence of the law named after him when he looked at a falling apple.

Newton himself never mentioned this apple. And it’s hardly worth wasting time today to refute this beautiful legend. And, apparently, Newton came to comprehend the great power of nature through logical reasoning. Probably, it was this that was included in the corresponding chapter of “Beginnings”.

The force of universal gravity affects the flight of the nucleus

Suppose that on a very high mountain, so high that its top is no longer in the atmosphere, we have installed a gigantic artillery piece. Its barrel was placed strictly parallel to the surface of the globe and fired. Having described the arc, the core falls to Earth.

We increase the charge, improve the quality of the gunpowder, and in one way or another force the cannonball to move at a higher speed after the next shot. The arc described by the core becomes flatter. The core falls much further from the foot of our mountain.

We also increase the charge and shoot. The core flies along such a flat trajectory that it descends parallel to the surface of the globe. The core can no longer fall to the Earth: at the same speed with which it decreases, the Earth escapes from under it. And, having described a ring around our planet, the core returns to the point of departure.

The gun can be removed in the meantime. After all, the flight of the core around the globe will take over an hour. And then the core will quickly fly over the top of the mountain and set off on a new flight around the Earth. If, as we agreed, the core does not experience any air resistance, it will never be able to fall.

For this, the core speed should be close to 8 km/sec. What if we increase the speed of the core's flight? It will first fly in an arc, flatter than the curvature of the earth's surface, and begin to move away from the Earth. At the same time, its speed will decrease under the influence of the Earth's gravity.

And finally, turning around, it will begin to fall back to Earth, but will fly past it and close not a circle, but an ellipse. The core will move around the Earth in exactly the same way as the Earth moves around the Sun, namely along an ellipse, at one of the foci of which the center of our planet will be located.

If you further increase the initial speed of the core, the ellipse will become more stretched. It is possible to stretch this ellipse so that the core will reach the lunar orbit or even much further. But until the initial speed of this core exceeds 11.2 km/sec, it will remain a satellite of the Earth.

The core, which received a speed of over 11.2 km/sec when fired, will forever fly away from the Earth along a parabolic trajectory. If an ellipse is a closed curve, then a parabola is a curve that has two branches going to infinity. Moving along an ellipse, no matter how elongated it may be, we will inevitably systematically return to the starting point. Moving along a parabola, we will never return to the starting point.

But, having left the Earth at this speed, the core will not yet be able to fly to infinity. The powerful gravity of the Sun will bend the trajectory of its flight, closing it around itself like the trajectory of a planet. The core will become the sister of the Earth, an independent tiny planet in our family of planets.

In order to direct the core beyond the planetary system, to overcome solar gravity, it is necessary to give it a speed of over 16.7 km/sec, and direct it so that the speed of the Earth’s own motion is added to this speed.

A speed of about 8 km/sec (this speed depends on the height of the mountain from which our cannon fires) is called circular speed, speeds from 8 to 11.2 km/sec are elliptical, from 11.2 to 16.7 km/sec are parabolic , and above this number - at liberating speeds.

It should be added here that the given values ​​of these velocities are valid only for the Earth. If we lived on Mars, the circular speed would be much more easily achievable for us - it is only about 3.6 km/sec, and the parabolic speed is only slightly higher than 5 km/sec.

But sending the core into space from Jupiter would be much more difficult than from Earth: the circular speed on this planet is 42.2 km/sec, and the parabolic speed is even 61.8 km/sec!

It would be most difficult for the inhabitants of the Sun to leave their world (if, of course, such could exist). The circular speed of this giant should be 437.6, and the breakaway speed - 618.8 km/sec!

Thus, Newton at the end of the 17th century, a hundred years before the first flight of the Montgolfier brothers’ hot-air balloon, two hundred years before the first flights of the Wright brothers’ airplane, and almost a quarter of a millennium before the takeoff of the first liquid-propellant rockets, showed the way to the sky for satellites and spaceships.

The force of universal gravity is inherent in every sphere

By using law of universal gravitation unknown planets were discovered, cosmogonic hypotheses of the origin of the solar system were created. The main force of nature, which controls the stars, the planets, apples in the garden, and gas molecules in the atmosphere, has been discovered and mathematically described.

But we do not know the mechanism of universal gravitation. Newtonian gravity does not explain, but clearly represents the modern state of planetary motion.

We do not know what causes the interaction of all bodies in the Universe. And it cannot be said that Newton was not interested in this reason. For many years he pondered its possible mechanism.

By the way, this is indeed an extremely mysterious power. A force that manifests itself through hundreds of millions of kilometers of space, devoid at first glance of any material formations with the help of which the transfer of interaction could be explained.

Newton's hypotheses

AND Newton resorted to hypothesis about the existence of a certain ether that supposedly fills the entire Universe. In 1675, he explained the attraction to the Earth by the fact that the ether, which fills the entire Universe, rushes in continuous streams to the center of the Earth, capturing all objects in this movement and creating the force of gravity. The same flow of ether rushes towards the Sun and, carrying planets and comets with it, ensures their elliptical trajectories...

This was not a very convincing hypothesis, although it was absolutely mathematically logical. But then, in 1679, Newton created a new hypothesis explaining the mechanism of gravity. This time he gives the ether the property of having different concentrations near the planets and far from them. The farther from the center of the planet, the supposedly denser the ether. And it has the property of squeezing out all material bodies from their denser layers into less dense ones. And all the bodies are squeezed out onto the surface of the Earth.

In 1706, Newton sharply denied the very existence of the ether. In 1717, he again returned to the hypothesis of extruding ether.

Newton's brilliant brain struggled to solve the great mystery and did not find it. This explains such sharp throwing from side to side. Newton liked to say:

I don't make hypotheses.

And although, as soon as we were able to verify, this is not entirely true, something else can be stated for sure: Newton knew how to clearly distinguish between indisputable things and unsteady and controversial hypotheses. And in “Principles” there is a formula for the great law, but there are no attempts to explain its mechanism.
The great physicist bequeathed this riddle to the man of the future. He died in 1727.
It has not been solved to this day.

The discussion about the physical essence of Newton's law took two centuries. And perhaps this discussion would not concern the very essence of the law if it answered exactly all the questions asked of it.

But the fact of the matter is that over time it turned out that this law is not universal. That there are cases when he cannot explain this or that phenomenon. Let's give examples.

The force of universal gravitation in Seeliger's calculations

The first of them is the Seeliger paradox. Considering the Universe to be infinite and uniformly filled with matter, Seeliger tried to calculate, according to Newton’s law, the force of universal gravitation created by the entire infinitely large mass of the infinite Universe at some point.

This was not an easy task from the point of view of pure mathematics. Having overcome all the difficulties of the most complex transformations, Seeliger established that the desired force of universal gravitation is proportional to the radius of the Universe. And since this radius is equal to infinity, then the gravitational force must be infinitely large. However, in practice we do not observe this. This means that the law of universal gravitation does not apply to the entire Universe.

However, other explanations for the paradox are possible. For example, we can assume that matter does not uniformly fill the entire Universe, but its density gradually decreases and, finally, somewhere very far away there is no matter at all. But to imagine such a picture means to admit the possibility of the existence of space without matter, which is generally absurd.

We can assume that the force of universal gravity weakens faster than the square of the distance increases. But this calls into question the amazing harmony of Newton's law. No, and this explanation did not satisfy scientists. The paradox remained a paradox.

Observations of the movement of Mercury

Another fact, the action of the force of universal gravitation, not explained by Newton's law, brought observations of the movement of Mercury- closest to the planet. Accurate calculations using Newton's law showed that perhelion - the point of the ellipse along which Mercury moves closest to the Sun - should shift by 531 arcseconds per 100 years.

And astronomers have determined that this displacement is equal to 573 arcseconds. This excess - 42 arc seconds - also could not be explained by scientists, using only formulas arising from Newton's law.

Explained the Seeliger paradox, the shift of the perihelion of Mercury, and many other paradoxical phenomena and inexplicable facts Albert Einstein, one of the greatest, if not the greatest physicist of all time. Among the annoying little things was the question of ethereal wind.

Albert Michelson's experiments

It seemed that this question did not directly concern the problem of gravitation. He related to optics, to light. More precisely, to determine its speed.

The speed of light was first determined by a Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer, observing the eclipse of the satellites of Jupiter. This happened back in 1675.

American physicist Albert Michelson at the end of the 18th century, he carried out a series of determinations of the speed of light under terrestrial conditions, using the apparatus he designed.

In 1927, he gave the speed of light a value of 299796 + 4 km/sec - this was excellent accuracy for those times. But the point is different. In 1880, he decided to explore the ethereal wind. He wanted to finally establish the existence of that very ether, the presence of which they tried to explain both the transmission of gravitational interaction and the transmission of light waves.

Michelson was probably the most remarkable experimentalist of his time. He had excellent equipment. And he was almost sure of success.

The essence of experience

Experience was intended this way. The Earth moves in its orbit at a speed of about 30 km/sec. Moves through the ether. This means that the speed of light from a source standing in front of the receiver relative to the movement of the Earth must be greater than from a source standing on the other side. In the first case, the speed of the etheric wind must be added to the speed of light; in the second case, the speed of light must decrease by this amount.

Of course, the speed of the Earth's orbit around the Sun is only one ten-thousandth the speed of light. It is very difficult to detect such a small term, but it is not for nothing that Michelson was called the king of accuracy. He used a clever method to capture the “subtle” difference in the speed of light rays.

He split the beam into two equal streams and directed them in mutually perpendicular directions: along the meridian and along the parallel. Having reflected from the mirrors, the rays returned. If a beam traveling along a parallel were influenced by the ethereal wind, when it was added to a meridional beam, interference fringes would appear, and the waves of the two beams would be out of phase.

However, it was difficult for Michelson to measure the paths of both rays with such great accuracy so that they were absolutely identical. So he built the apparatus so that there were no interference fringes, and then rotated it 90 degrees.

The meridional ray became latitudinal and vice versa. If there is an etheric wind, black and light stripes should appear under the eyepiece! But they were not there. Perhaps, when turning the apparatus, the scientist moved it.

He set it up at noon and secured it. After all, in addition to the fact that it also rotates around an axis. And therefore, at different times of the day, the latitude beam occupies a different position relative to the oncoming ethereal wind. Now, when the device is strictly motionless, one can be convinced of the accuracy of the experiment.

Again there were no interference fringes. The experiment was carried out many times, and Michelson, and with him all the physicists of that time, were amazed. No ethereal wind was detected! The light moved in all directions at the same speed!

No one has been able to explain this. Michelson repeated the experiment again and again, improved the equipment, and finally achieved almost incredible measurement accuracy, an order of magnitude greater than what was necessary for the success of the experiment. And again nothing!

Albert Einstein's experiments

The next big step in knowledge of the force of universal gravity did Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein was once asked:

How did you arrive at your special theory of relativity? Under what circumstances did the brilliant idea strike you? The scientist replied: “I always imagined that this was the case.”

Maybe he didn’t want to be frank, maybe he wanted to get rid of his annoying interlocutor. But it is difficult to imagine that the concept of the connections between time, space and speed discovered by Einstein was innate.

No, of course, first a guess flashed through, bright as lightning. Then its development began. No, there are no contradictions with known phenomena. And then those five pages, filled with formulas, appeared that were published in a physics journal. Pages that opened a new era in physics.

Imagine a starship flying in space. Let us warn you right away: the starship is very unique, the kind you have never read about in science fiction stories. Its length is 300 thousand kilometers, and its speed is, let’s say, 240 thousand km/sec. And this spaceship flies past one of the intermediate platforms in space, without stopping at it. At full speed.

One of its passengers is standing on the deck of the starship with a watch. And you and I, reader, are standing on a platform - its length must correspond to the size of the starship, i.e. 300 thousand kilometers, because otherwise it will not be able to land on it. And we also have a watch in our hands.

We notice: at that moment, when the nose of the spaceship reached the rear edge of our platform, a lantern flashed on it, illuminating the space surrounding it. A second later, the beam of light reached the front edge of our platform. We have no doubt about this, because we know the speed of light, and we managed to accurately detect the corresponding moment on the clock. And on the starship...

But a starship was also flying towards the beam of light. And we definitely saw that the light illuminated its stern at the moment when it was somewhere near the middle of the platform. We definitely saw that the beam of light did not travel 300 thousand kilometers from the bow to the stern of the ship.

But the passengers on the deck of the starship are sure of something else. They are confident that their beam covered the entire distance from bow to stern of 300 thousand kilometers. After all, he spent a whole second on this. They also absolutely accurately detected this on their watch. And how could it be otherwise: after all, the speed of light does not depend on the speed of the source...

How so? We see one thing from a stationary platform, but they see something else on the deck of a starship? What's the matter?

Einstein's theory of relativity

It should be noted right away: Einstein's theory of relativity at first glance, it absolutely contradicts our established understanding of the structure of the world. We can say that it also contradicts common sense, as we are accustomed to represent it. This has happened more than once in the history of science.

But the discovery of the spherical shape of the Earth also contradicted common sense. How can people live on the opposite side and not fall into the abyss?

For us, the sphericity of the Earth is an undoubted fact, and from the point of view of common sense, any other assumption is meaningless and wild. But step back from your time, imagine the first appearance of this idea, and it becomes clear how difficult it would be to accept.

Well, would it be easier to admit that the Earth is not motionless, but flies along its trajectory tens of times faster than a cannonball?

These were all failures of common sense. That's why modern physicists never refer to it.

Now let's return to the special theory of relativity. The world first learned about it in 1905 from an article signed by a little-known name - Albert Einstein. And he was only 26 years old at that time.

Einstein made a very simple and logical assumption from this paradox: from the point of view of an observer on the platform, less time has passed in a moving carriage than was measured by your wristwatch. In the carriage, the passage of time slowed down compared to time on the stationary platform.

Absolutely amazing things logically flowed from this assumption. It turned out that a person going to work on a tram, compared to a pedestrian walking the same way, not only saves time due to speed, but it also goes slower for him.

However, do not try to preserve eternal youth in this way: even if you become a carriage driver and spend a third of your life on a tram, in 30 years you will gain hardly more than a millionth of a second. For the gain in time to become noticeable, you need to move at a speed close to the speed of light.

It turns out that an increase in the speed of bodies is reflected in their mass. The closer the speed of a body is to the speed of light, the greater its mass. When the speed of a body is equal to the speed of light, its mass is equal to infinity, i.e. it is greater than the mass of the Earth, the Sun, the Galaxy, our entire Universe... This is the mass that can be concentrated in a simple cobblestone, accelerating it to speed
Sveta!

This imposes a limitation that does not allow any material body to develop a speed equal to the speed of light. After all, as the mass grows, it becomes more and more difficult to accelerate it. And an infinite mass cannot be moved from its place by any force.

However, nature has made a very important exception to this law for a whole class of particles. For example, for photons. They can move at the speed of light. More precisely, they cannot move at any other speed. It is unthinkable to imagine a motionless photon.

When stationary, it has no mass. Neutrinos also have no rest mass, and they are also condemned to an eternal uncontrolled flight through space at the maximum speed possible in our Universe, without overtaking light or falling behind it.

Isn’t it true that each of the consequences of the special theory of relativity that we have listed is surprising and paradoxical! And each, of course, contradicts “common sense”!

But here’s what’s interesting: not in their specific form, but as a broad philosophical position, all these amazing consequences were predicted by the founders of dialectical materialism. What do these results indicate? About the connections that interconnect energy and mass, mass and speed, speed and time, speed and length of a moving object...

Einstein's discovery of interdependence, like cement (more details:), connecting together reinforcement, or foundation stones, brought together things and phenomena that had previously seemed independent from each other and created the foundation on which, for the first time in the history of science, it seemed possible to build a harmonious building. This building is an idea of ​​how our Universe works.

But first, at least a few words about the general theory of relativity, also created by Albert Einstein.

This name - general theory of relativity - does not quite correspond to the content of the theory that will be discussed. It establishes the interdependence between space and matter. Apparently it would be more correct to call it space-time theory, or theory of gravity.

But this name has become so intertwined with Einstein’s theory that even raising the question of replacing it now seems indecent to many scientists.

The general theory of relativity established the interdependence between matter and the time and space that contain it. It turned out that space and time not only cannot be imagined as existing separately from matter, but their properties also depend on the matter filling them.

Starting point for reasoning

Therefore, we can only indicate starting point and provide some important conclusions.

At the beginning of space travel, an unexpected catastrophe destroyed the library, film collection and other repositories of the mind and memory of people flying through space. And the nature of the native planet was forgotten in the change of centuries. Even the law of universal gravitation is forgotten, because the rocket flies in intergalactic space, where it is almost not felt.

However, the ship's engines work great, and the energy supply in the batteries is practically unlimited. Most of the time the ship moves by inertia, and its inhabitants are accustomed to weightlessness. But sometimes they turn on the engines and slow down or speed up the movement of the ship. When the jet nozzles blaze into the void with a colorless flame and the ship moves at an accelerated pace, the inhabitants feel that their bodies are becoming weighty, they are forced to walk around the ship, and not fly along the corridors.

And now the flight is close to completion. The ship flies up to one of the stars and falls into the orbit of the most suitable planet. The spaceships go outside, walk on the soil covered with fresh greenery, continuously experiencing the same feeling of heaviness, familiar from the time when the ship was moving at an accelerated pace.

But the planet moves evenly. It can’t fly towards them with a constant acceleration of 9.8 m/sec2! And they have the first assumption that the gravitational field (gravitational force) and acceleration give the same effect, and perhaps have a common nature.

None of our earthling contemporaries were on such a long flight, but many felt the phenomenon of “heaviness” and “lightening” of their body. Even an ordinary elevator, when it moves at an accelerated pace, creates this feeling. When going down, you feel a sudden loss of weight; when going up, on the contrary, the floor presses on your legs with greater force than usual.

But one feeling does not prove anything. After all, sensations try to convince us that the Sun moves across the sky around the motionless Earth, that all the stars and planets are at the same distance from us, in the firmament, etc.

Scientists have subjected the sensations to experimental testing. Newton also thought about the strange identity of the two phenomena. He tried to give them numerical characteristics. Having measured gravitational and , he was convinced that their values ​​were always strictly equal to each other.

He made the pendulums of the pilot plant from all kinds of materials: silver, lead, glass, salt, wood, water, gold, sand, wheat. The result was the same.

Equivalence principle, which we are talking about, lies at the basis of the general theory of relativity, although the modern interpretation of the theory no longer needs this principle. Skipping the mathematical conclusions that follow from this principle, let us move directly to some consequences of the general theory of relativity.

The presence of large masses of matter greatly affects the surrounding space. It leads to such changes in it that can be defined as heterogeneity of space. These inhomogeneities direct the movement of any masses that find themselves near the attracting body.

Usually they resort to this analogy. Imagine a canvas stretched tightly onto a frame parallel to the earth's surface. Place a heavy weight on it. This will be our large attracting mass. It will, of course, bend the canvas and end up in some kind of depression. Now roll the ball along this canvas so that part of its path lies next to the attracting mass. Depending on how the ball is launched, there are three possible options.

1. The ball will fly far enough from the depression created by the deflection of the canvas and will not change its movement.
2. The ball will touch the depression, and the lines of its movement will bend towards the attracting mass.
3. The ball will fall into this hole, will not be able to get out of it, and will make one or two revolutions around the gravitating mass.

Isn’t it true that the third option very beautifully models the capture by a star or planet of a foreign body carelessly flying into their field of attraction?

And the second case is the bending of the trajectory of a body flying at a speed greater than the possible capture speed! The first case is similar to flying beyond the practical reach of the gravitational field. Yes, precisely practical, because theoretically the gravitational field is limitless.

Of course, this is a very distant analogy, primarily because no one can really imagine the deflection of our three-dimensional space. Nobody knows what the physical meaning of this deflection, or curvature, as they often say, is.

From the general theory of relativity it follows that any material body can move in a gravitational field only along curved lines. Only in particular, special cases does the curve turn into a straight line.

A ray of light also obeys this rule. After all, it consists of photons that have a certain mass in flight. And the gravitational field exerts its influence on it, just like on a molecule, an asteroid or a planet.

Another important conclusion is that the gravitational field also changes the passage of time. Near a large attracting mass, in the strong gravitational field it creates, the passage of time should be slower than far from it.

You see, the general theory of relativity is fraught with paradoxical conclusions that can once again overturn our ideas of “common sense”!

Gravitational collapse

Let's talk about an amazing phenomenon that has a cosmic character - gravitational collapse (catastrophic compression). This phenomenon occurs in gigantic accumulations of matter, where gravitational forces reach such enormous magnitudes that no other forces existing in nature can resist them.

Remember Newton's famous formula: the smaller the square of the distance between gravitating bodies, the greater the gravitational force. Thus, the denser a material formation becomes, the smaller its size, the more rapidly the forces of gravity increase, the more inevitable their destructive embrace.

There is a cunning technique with which nature fights the seemingly limitless compression of matter. To do this, it stops the very passage of time in the sphere of action of supergiant gravitational forces, and the bound masses of matter seem to be turned off from our Universe, frozen in a strange lethargic sleep.

The first of these “black holes” in space has probably already been discovered. According to the assumption of Soviet scientists O. Kh. Guseinov and A. Sh. Novruzova, it is Delta Gemini - a double star with one invisible component.

The visible component has a mass of 1.8 solar, and its invisible “companion” should be four times more massive than the visible one, according to calculations. But there are no traces of it: it is impossible to see the most amazing creation of nature, the “black hole”.

The Soviet scientist Professor K.P. Stanyukovich, as they say, “at the tip of his pen,” through purely theoretical constructions, showed that particles of “frozen matter” can be very diverse in size.

• Its giant formations are possible, similar to quasars, continuously emitting as much energy as all 100 billion stars of our Galaxy emit.
• Much more modest clumps, equal to only a few solar masses, are possible. Both objects can arise themselves from ordinary, non-sleeping matter.
• And formations of a completely different class are possible, comparable in mass to elementary particles.

In order for them to arise, the matter that composes them must first be subjected to gigantic pressure and driven into the limits of the Schwarzschild sphere - a sphere where time stops completely for an external observer. And even if after this the pressure is removed, the particles for which time has stopped will continue to exist independently of our Universe.

Plankeons

Plankeons are a completely special class of particles. They have, according to K. P. Stanyukovich, an extremely interesting property: they carry matter in an unchanged form, the way it was millions and billions of years ago. Looking inside the plankeon, we would be able to see matter as it was at the moment of the birth of our Universe. According to theoretical calculations, there are about 10 80 plankeons in the Universe, approximately one plankeon in a cube of space with a side of 10 centimeters. By the way, simultaneously with Stanyukovich and (independently of him), the hypothesis about plankeons was put forward by Academician M.A. Markov. Only Markov gave them a different name - maximons.

One can try to explain the sometimes paradoxical transformations of elementary particles using the special properties of plankeons. It is known that when two particles collide, fragments are never formed, but other elementary particles arise. This is truly amazing: in the ordinary world, breaking a vase, we will never get whole cups or even rosettes. But suppose that in the depths of each elementary particle there is hidden a plankeon, one or several, and sometimes many plankeons.

At the moment of collision of particles, the tightly tied “bag” of the plankeon opens slightly, some particles will “fall” into it, and in return those that we consider to have arisen during the collision will “pop out”. At the same time, plankeon, like a prudent accountant, will ensure all the “laws of conservation” accepted in the world of elementary particles.
Well, what does the mechanism of universal gravitation have to do with it?

“Responsible” for gravity, according to the hypothesis of K. P. Stanyukovich, are tiny particles, the so-called gravitons, continuously emitted by elementary particles. Gravitons are as much smaller than the latter as a speck of dust dancing in a sunbeam is smaller than the globe.

The emission of gravitons obeys a number of laws. In particular, they fly more easily into that area of ​​space. Which contains fewer gravitons. This means that if there are two celestial bodies in space, both will emit gravitons predominantly “outward”, in directions opposite to each other. This creates an impulse that causes the bodies to come closer and attract each other.

As a character from Soviet film classics said, “Isn’t it time, my friends, for us to take a swing at William Isaac, you know, um, our Shakespeare and Newton?”

I think it's time.

Newton is considered one of the greatest scientific minds in all of human history. It was the “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” that laid the foundation for the “scientific worldview”, which smoothly developed into militant materialism, which became the basis of the scientific paradigm for centuries.

The right to the uniqueness of truth was argued by “exact knowledge” of the phenomena of the surrounding world. The foundation of this very “indestructible, exact knowledge” was the Law of Universal Gravitation named after Isaac Newton. That’s exactly where we’ll hit the foundation! - We will show that no law of gravity actually exists in nature, and the entire edifice of modern physics is built not even on sand, but on swamp abyss.

In order to demonstrate the inconsistency of Newton's hypothesis about the mutual attraction of matter, a single exception is sufficient. We will give a few, and start with the most obvious and easily verifiable - with the movement of the Moon in its orbit. Formulas known to everyone from a high school course, and calculations available to a fifth grader. The data for the calculation can be taken even from Wikipedia, and then checked in scientific reference books.

According to the Law, the movement of celestial bodies in orbits is determined by the force of attraction between the masses of bodies and the speed of bodies relative to each other. So, let's see where the resultant forces of attraction from the Earth and the Sun are directed, acting on the Moon at the moment when the Moon flies between the Earth and the Sun (at least at the moment of a solar eclipse).

The force of attraction, as is known, is determined by the formula:

G - gravitational constant

m, M - body masses

R - distance between bodies

Let's take it from the reference books:

gravitational constant equal to approximately 6.6725 × 10 −11 m³/(kg s²).

Moon mass - 7.3477×10 22 kg

mass of the Sun - 1.9891×10 30 kg

Earth mass - 5.9737×10 24 kg

distance between Earth and Moon = 380,000,000 m

distance between the Moon and the Sun = 149,000,000,000 m

Substituting this data into the formula we get:

The force of attraction between the Earth and the Moon = 6.6725×10 - 11 x 7.3477×10 22 x 5.9737×10 24 / 380000000 2 = 2.028×10 20 H

The force of attraction between the Moon and the Sun =6.6725×10 - 11 x 7.3477 10 22 x 1.9891 10 30 / 149000000000 2 = 4.39 × 10 20 H

Thus, according to strict scientific data and calculations, the force of attraction between the Sun and the Moon, at the moment the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, is more than twice as strong as between the Earth and the Moon. And then the Moon should continue its path in orbit around the Sun, if the same law of universal gravitation were true. That is, the law written by Newton for the Moon is not a decree.

We also note that the Moon does not show its attractive properties in relation to the Earth: even in the time of Laplace, scientists were baffled by the behavior of sea tides, which in no way depend on the Moon.

One more fact. The Moon, moving around the Earth, would have to influence the trajectory of the latter - dragging the Earth from side to side with its gravity, as a result, the trajectory of the Earth should be zigzag, the center of mass of the Moon-Earth system should move strictly along an ellipse:

But, alas, nothing like this was discovered, although modern methods make it possible to reliably establish this shift towards the Sun and back, at a speed of about 12 meters per second. If only it really existed.

There was no decrease in the weight of bodies when immersed in ultra-deep mines.

The first attempt to test the theory of mass gravity was made on the shores of the Indian Ocean, where on one side there is the world's highest rock ridge of the Himalayas, and on the other there is an ocean bowl filled with much less massive water. But, alas. the plumb line towards the Himalayas does not deviate!

Moreover, ultra-sensitive instruments - gravimeters - do not detect a difference in the gravity of a test body at the same height above mountains or seas - even if the depth is several kilometers. And then the scientific world, in order to save the established theory, came up with a support for it - they say the reason for this is “isostasy” - they say, denser rocks are located under the seas, and loose ones under the mountains, and their density is exactly such as to fit everything to the answer scientists need. It's just a song!

But if only this were the only example in the scientific world of adjusting the surrounding reality to the ideas of highbrow men about it. One can also give a blatant example of an invented “elemental particle” - the neutrino, which was invented to explain the “mass defect” in nuclear physics. Even earlier, the “latent heat of crystallization” was invented in thermal engineering.

But we digress from “universal gravity”. Another example of where the predictions of this theory cannot be detected is the lack of reliably established satellites for asteroids. There are clouds of asteroids flying across the sky, but none of them have satellites! Attempts to place artificial satellites into asteroid orbit ended in failure. The first attempt - the NEAR probe was driven to the Eros asteroid by the Americans. Wasted. The second attempt was the HAYABUSA (“Falcon”) probe, the Japanese sent it to the Itokawa asteroid, and nothing came of it either.

There are many more similar examples that can be given, but we will not overload the text with them. Let us turn to another problem of scientific knowledge: is it always possible to establish the truth in principle - at least ever.

No, not always. Let us give an example based on the same “universal gravity”. As you know, the speed of light is finite, as a result we see distant objects not where they are located at the moment, but we see them at the point from which the ray of light we saw started. Many stars, perhaps not at all, only their light comes through - a hackneyed topic. But gravity - at what speed does it spread? Laplace also managed to establish that gravity from the Sun does not come from where we see it, but from another point. Having analyzed the data accumulated by that time, Laplace established that “gravity” propagates faster than light by at least seven orders of magnitude! Modern measurements have pushed the speed of gravity even further - at least 11 orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light.

There are strong suspicions that “gravity” generally spreads instantly. But if this actually takes place, then how can this be established - after all, any measurements are theoretically impossible without some kind of error. So we will never know whether this speed is finite or infinite. And the world in which it has a limit and the world in which it is unlimited are “two big differences,” and we will never know what kind of world we live in! This is the limit that is set for scientific knowledge. Accepting one point of view or another is a matter of faith, completely irrational and not amenable to any logic. How the belief in the “scientific picture of the world”, which is based on the “law of universal gravitation”, which exists only in zombie heads, and which does not appear in the world around us, defies any logic...

Let’s leave Newton’s law for now, and in conclusion we will give a clear example of the fact that the laws discovered on Earth are not at all universal for the rest of the Universe.

Let's look at the same Moon. Preferably during the full moon. Why does the Moon look like a disk - more like a pancake than a bun, the shape of which it has.

After all, she is a ball, and a ball, if illuminated from the photographer’s side, looks something like this: in the center there is a glare, then the illumination will decrease, and the image is darker towards the edges of the disk.

The moon in the sky has uniform illumination - both in the center and at the edges, just look at the sky. You can use good binoculars or a camera with a strong optical “zoom”; an example of such a photograph is given at the beginning of the article. It was filmed at 16x zoom. This image can be processed in any graphics editor, increasing the contrast, to make sure that everything is so. Moreover, the brightness at the edges of the disk at the top and bottom is even slightly higher than in the center, where, according to theory, it should be maximum.

Here we have an example of the fact that the laws of optics on the Moon and on Earth are completely different! For some reason, the moon reflects all the falling light towards the Earth. We have no reason to extend the patterns identified in the conditions of the Earth to the entire Universe. It is not a fact that physical “constants” are actually constants and do not change over time.

All of the above shows that the “theories” of “black holes”, “Higgs bosons” and much more are not even science fiction, but simply nonsense, more than the theory that the earth rests on turtles, elephants and whales...

June 14th, 2015 , 12:24 pm

We all studied the law of universal gravitation in school. But what do we really know about gravity beyond what our school teachers put into our heads? Let's update our knowledge...

Fact one: Newton did not discover the law of universal gravitation

Fact two: falsifying the gravitational attraction experiment

This is confirmed by the fact that such a simple installation of the 18th century for educational purposes should have been installed, if not in every school, then at least in the physics departments of universities, in order to show students in practice the result of the law of universal gravitation. However, the Cavendish installation is not used in educational programs, and both schoolchildren and students take the word that two blanks attract each other.

Fact three: The law of gravity does not work during a solar eclipse

According to the formula, the Moon would have to leave the earth's orbit and begin to revolve around the sun.

Gravity constant - 6.6725×10−11 m³/(kg s²).
The mass of the Moon is 7.3477×1022 kg.
The mass of the Sun is 1.9891×1030 kg.
The mass of the Earth is 5.9737×1024 kg.
Distance between the Earth and the Moon = 380,000,000 m.
Distance between the Moon and the Sun = 149,000,000,000 m.

Earth and Moon:
6.6725×10-11 x 7.3477×1022 x 5.9737×1024 / 3800000002 = 2.028×1020 H
Moon and Sun:
6.6725 × 10-11 x 7.3477 1022 x 1.9891 1030 / 1490000000002 = 4.39 × 1020 H

2.028×1020H<< 4,39×1020 H
The force of attraction between the Earth and the Moon<< Сила притяжения между Луной и Солнцем

These calculations can be criticized by the fact that the moon is an artificial hollow body and the reference density of this celestial body is most likely determined incorrectly.

Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that the Moon is not a solid body, but a thin-walled shell. The authoritative journal Science describes the results of the work of seismic sensors after the third stage of the rocket that accelerated the Apollo 13 spacecraft hit the lunar surface: “the seismic ringing was detected for more than four hours. On Earth, if a missile struck at an equivalent distance, the signal would last only a few minutes.”

Seismic vibrations that decay so slowly are typical of a hollow resonator, not a solid body.
But the Moon, among other things, does not exhibit its attractive properties in relation to the Earth - the Earth-Moon pair does not move around a common center of mass, as it would be according to the law of universal gravitation, and the ellipsoidal orbit of the Earth, contrary to this law, does not become zigzag.

Moreover, the parameters of the orbit of the Moon itself do not remain constant; the orbit, in scientific terminology, “evolves”, and does this contrary to the law of universal gravitation.

Fact four: the absurdity of the theory of ebb and flow

According to the theory, the Moon's gravity forms a tidal ellipsoid in the ocean, with two tidal humps that move along the Earth's surface due to daily rotation.

However, practice shows the absurdity of these theories. After all, according to them, a tidal hump 1 meter high should move through the Drake Passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic in 6 hours. Since water is incompressible, the mass of water would raise the level to a height of about 10 meters, which does not happen in practice. In practice, tidal phenomena occur autonomously in areas of 1000-2000 km.

Laplace was also amazed by the paradox: why in the seaports of France full water comes sequentially, although according to the concept of a tidal ellipsoid it should come there simultaneously.

Fact five: the theory of mass gravity does not work

The first attempt to test the theory of mass gravity was made by the British in the mid-18th century on the shores of the Indian Ocean, where, on one side, there is the world's highest rock ridge of the Himalayas, and on the other, an ocean bowl filled with much less massive water. But, alas, the plumb line does not deviate towards the Himalayas! Moreover, ultra-sensitive instruments - gravimeters - do not detect a difference in the gravity of a test body at the same height, both over massive mountains and over less dense seas of kilometer depth.

To save the theory that has taken root, scientists came up with a support for it: they say the reason for this is “isostasy” - denser rocks are located under the seas, and loose rocks are located under the mountains, and their density is exactly the same as to adjust everything to the desired value.

It was also experimentally established that gravimeters in deep mines show that the force of gravity does not decrease with depth. It continues to grow, depending only on the square of the distance to the center of the earth.

Fact six: gravity is not generated by matter or mass

The independence of gravity from matter is confirmed by the fact that, with rare exceptions, small bodies of the solar system have no gravitational attractive ability completely. With the exception of the Moon, more than six dozen planetary satellites show no signs of their own gravity. This has been proven by both indirect and direct measurements; for example, since 2004, the Cassini probe in the vicinity of Saturn has been flying close to its satellites from time to time, but no changes in the speed of the probe have been recorded. With the help of the same Casseni, a geyser was discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.

What physical processes must occur on a cosmic piece of ice for jets of steam to fly into space?
For the same reason, Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a gas tail as a result of atmospheric outflow.

No satellites predicted by theory have been found on asteroids, despite their huge number. And in all the reports about double or paired asteroids that supposedly revolve around a common center of mass, there was no evidence of the rotation of these pairs. The companions happened to be nearby, moving in quasi-synchronous orbits around the sun.

Attempts to place artificial satellites into asteroid orbit ended in failure. Examples include the NEAR probe, which was sent to the Eros asteroid by the Americans, or the HAYABUSA probe, which the Japanese sent to the Itokawa asteroid.

Fact seven: Saturn's asteroids do not obey the law of gravity

However, two groups of companion asteroids found behind and ahead in the orbit of Saturn, which astronomers joyfully called the Trojans, moved out of the predicted areas, and the confirmation of the law of universal gravitation turned into a puncture.

Fact eight: contradiction with the general theory of relativity

Having analyzed the data accumulated by that time, Laplace established that “gravity” propagates faster than light by at least seven orders of magnitude! Modern measurements of receiving pulsar pulses have pushed the speed of propagation of gravity even further - at least 10 orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light. Thus, experimental research contradicts the general theory of relativity, which official science still relies on, despite its complete failure.

Fact nine: gravity anomalies

Fact ten: research into the vibrational nature of antigravity

Some researchers are analyzing the vibrational nature of antigravity. This effect is clearly demonstrated in modern experiments, where droplets hang in the air due to acoustic levitation. Here we see how, with the help of a sound of a certain frequency, it is possible to confidently hold drops of liquid in the air...

But the effect at first glance is explained by the gyroscope principle, but even such a simple experiment for the most part contradicts gravity in its modern understanding.

Few people know that Viktor Stepanovich Grebennikov, a Siberian entomologist who studied the effect of cavity structures in insects, described the phenomena of antigravity in insects in the book “My World”. Scientists have long known that massive insects, such as the cockchafer, fly in spite of the laws of gravity rather than because of them.

Moreover, based on his research, Grebennikov created an anti-gravity platform.

Viktor Stepanovich died under rather strange circumstances and his work was partially lost, but some part of the anti-gravity platform prototype has been preserved and can be seen in the Grebennikov Museum in Novosibirsk.

Another practical application of antigravity can be observed in the city of Homestead in Florida, where there is a strange structure of coral monolithic blocks, which is popularly nicknamed Coral Castle. It was built by a native of Latvia, Edward Lidskalnin, in the first half of the 20th century. This man of thin build did not have any tools, he did not even have a car or any equipment at all.

He did not use electricity at all, also due to its absence, and yet somehow went down to the ocean, where he cut out multi-ton stone blocks and somehow delivered them to his site, laying them out with perfect precision.

After Ed's death, scientists began to carefully study his creation. For the sake of the experiment, a powerful bulldozer was brought in and an attempt was made to move one of the 30-ton blocks of the coral castle. The bulldozer roared and skidded, but did not move the huge stone.

A strange device was found inside the castle, which scientists called a direct current generator. It was a massive structure with many metal parts. 240 permanent strip magnets were built into the outside of the device. But how Edward Leedskalnin actually made multi-ton blocks move still remains a mystery.

The research of John Searle is known, in whose hands unusual generators came to life, rotated and generated energy; discs with a diameter of half a meter to 10 meters rose into the air and made controlled flights from London to Cornwall and back.

The professor’s experiments were repeated in Russia, the USA and Taiwan. In Russia, for example, in 1999, a patent application for “devices for generating mechanical energy” was registered under No. 99122275/09. Vladimir Vitalievich Roshchin and Sergei Mikhailovich Godin, in fact, reproduced SEG (Searl Effect Generator) and conducted a series of studies with it. The result was a statement: you can get 7 kW of electricity without costs; the rotating generator lost weight up to 40%.

The equipment from Searle's first laboratory was taken to an unknown location while he was in prison. The installation of Godin and Roshchin simply disappeared; all publications about it, with the exception of the application for an invention, disappeared.

The Hutchison Effect, named after the Canadian engineer-inventor, is also known. The effect manifests itself in the levitation of heavy objects, the alloy of dissimilar materials (for example, metal + wood), and the anomalous heating of metals in the absence of burning substances near them. Here is a video of these effects:

Whatever gravity actually is, it should be recognized that official science is completely incapable of clearly explaining the nature of this phenomenon.

Yaroslav Yargin

Despite the fact that gravity is the weakest interaction between objects in the Universe, its significance in physics and astronomy is enormous, since it can influence physical objects at any distance in space.

If you are interested in astronomy, you have probably wondered what such a concept as gravity or the law of universal gravitation is. Gravity is the universal fundamental interaction between all objects in the Universe.

The discovery of the law of gravity is attributed to the famous English physicist Isaac Newton. Probably many of you know the story of the apple that fell on the head of the famous scientist. However, if you look deeper into history, you can see that the presence of gravity was thought about long before his era by philosophers and scientists of antiquity, for example, Epicurus. However, it was Newton who first described the gravitational interaction between physical bodies within the framework of classical mechanics. His theory was developed by another famous scientist, Albert Einstein, who in his general theory of relativity more accurately described the influence of gravity in space, as well as its role in the space-time continuum.

Newton's law of universal gravitation says that the force of gravitational attraction between two points of mass separated by a distance is inversely proportional to the square of the distance and directly proportional to both masses. The force of gravity is long-range. That is, regardless of how a body with mass moves, in classical mechanics its gravitational potential will depend purely on the position of this object at a given moment in time. The greater the mass of an object, the greater its gravitational field - the more powerful the gravitational force it has. Space objects such as galaxies, stars and planets have the greatest gravitational force and, accordingly, quite strong gravitational fields.

Gravitational fields

Earth's gravitational field

The gravitational field is the distance within which gravitational interaction occurs between objects in the Universe. The greater the mass of an object, the stronger its gravitational field - the more noticeable its impact on other physical bodies within a certain space. The gravitational field of an object is potential. The essence of the previous statement is that if you introduce the potential energy of attraction between two bodies, then it will not change after moving the latter along a closed loop. From here comes another famous law of conservation of the sum of potential and kinetic energy in a closed loop.

In the material world, the gravitational field is of great importance. It is possessed by all material objects in the Universe that have mass. The gravitational field can influence not only matter, but also energy. It is due to the influence of the gravitational fields of such large cosmic objects as black holes, quasars and supermassive stars that solar systems, galaxies and other astronomical clusters are formed, which are characterized by a logical structure.

Recent scientific data show that the famous effect of the expansion of the Universe is also based on the laws of gravitational interaction. In particular, the expansion of the Universe is facilitated by powerful gravitational fields, both of its small and largest objects.

Gravitational radiation in a binary system

Gravitational radiation or gravitational wave is a term first introduced into physics and cosmology by the famous scientist Albert Einstein. Gravitational radiation in the theory of gravitation is generated by the movement of material objects with variable acceleration. During the acceleration of an object, a gravitational wave seems to “break away” from it, which leads to fluctuations in the gravitational field in the surrounding space. This is called the gravitational wave effect.

Although gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity as well as other theories of gravity, they have never been directly detected. This is due primarily to their extreme smallness. However, in astronomy there is indirect evidence that can confirm this effect. Thus, the effect of a gravitational wave can be observed in the example of the convergence of double stars. Observations confirm that the rate of convergence of binary stars depends to some extent on the loss of energy from these cosmic objects, which is presumably spent on gravitational radiation. Scientists will be able to reliably confirm this hypothesis in the near future using the new generation of Advanced LIGO and VIRGO telescopes.

In modern physics, there are two concepts of mechanics: classical and quantum. Quantum mechanics was developed relatively recently and is fundamentally different from classical mechanics. In quantum mechanics, objects (quanta) do not have definite positions and velocities; everything here is based on probability. That is, an object can occupy a certain place in space at a certain point in time. Where he will move next cannot be reliably determined, but only with a high degree of probability.

An interesting effect of gravity is that it can bend the space-time continuum. Einstein's theory states that in the space around a bunch of energy or any material substance, space-time is curved. Accordingly, the trajectory of particles that fall under the influence of the gravitational field of this substance changes, which makes it possible to predict the trajectory of their movement with a high degree of probability.

Theories of gravity

Today scientists know over a dozen different theories of gravity. They are divided into classical and alternative theories. The most famous representative of the former is the classical theory of gravity by Isaac Newton, which was invented by the famous British physicist back in 1666. Its essence lies in the fact that a massive body in mechanics generates a gravitational field around itself, which attracts smaller objects. In turn, the latter also have a gravitational field, like any other material objects in the Universe.

The next popular theory of gravity was invented by the world famous German scientist Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century. Einstein was able to more accurately describe gravity as a phenomenon, and also explain its action not only in classical mechanics, but also in the quantum world. His general theory of relativity describes the ability of a force such as gravity to influence the space-time continuum, as well as the trajectory of elementary particles in space.

Among the alternative theories of gravity, the relativistic theory, which was invented by our compatriot, the famous physicist A.A., perhaps deserves the greatest attention. Logunov. Unlike Einstein, Logunov argued that gravity is not a geometric, but a real, fairly strong physical force field. Among the alternative theories of gravity, scalar, bimetric, quasilinear and others are also known.

1. For people who have been in space and returned to Earth, it is quite difficult at first to get used to the strength of the gravitational influence of our planet. Sometimes this takes several weeks.
2. It has been proven that the human body in a state of weightlessness can lose up to 1% of bone marrow mass per month.
3. Among the planets in the solar system, Mars has the least gravitational force, and Jupiter has the greatest.
4. The known salmonella bacteria, which cause intestinal diseases, behave more actively in a state of weightlessness and are capable of causing much more harm to the human body.
5. Among all known astronomical objects in the Universe, black holes have the greatest gravitational force. A black hole the size of a golf ball could have the same gravitational force as our entire planet.
6. The force of gravity on Earth is not the same in all corners of our planet. For example, in the Hudson Bay region of Canada it is lower than in other regions of the globe.