Am I really falling down?

[smartie]

If I were to climb to the top of a tall building and jump off the roof feet first with a pair of weighing scales strapped to my feet, would I really be falling. Remember<font color="yellow"> I would be in free fall... weightless </font> The scales would read 0 Kilos so<font color="yellow"> I would be experiencing no forces acting on me</font> It's as though I were floating in space. I am not experiencing gravity since I have given in to it. So am I really falling or is it the Earth rushing up to meet me.<br />

 

[bonzelite]

i'll take a wild guess and say that both are true: the earth is rushing up to meet you inasmuch as you are falling to meet it. <br /><br />about falling, i do know it is technically true that the moon is falling around the earth, as is the space station, space shuttle, satellites, etc. but if you jump off a building, i'd be dayum sure you'd feel a force acting upon you. you'd be screaming your bloody head off and flailing your arms around.

 

[qso1]

Your falling because the Earth will not suddenly rush up to meet you because you jumped out of a building. It will appear to be rushing towards you based on your perspective.<br /><br />Expanding a bit on Bronzelites point:<br /><br />Satellites fall around the Earth because they have enough velocity to achieve the inertia required to keep the fall be short enough to hit the ground so to speak.<br /><br />In addition:<br />During the fall, you actually do continue experiencing gravity, your in a free fall because there is no surface to support you but the fact you are heading towards the center of the Earth tells you that you are experiencing gravity, as do satellites.<br /><br />Technically, even satellites experience gravity because what we commonly refer to as weightlessness for satellites is in fact microgravity. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[drwayne]

A somewhat simpler picture of an orbit is this. The satellite is moving at a speed such that the it is falling at the same rate as the surface of the Earth is curving away from it.<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[dragon04]

No, you're falling. Anything within Earth's gravity well not at escape velocity is falling. Towards Earth, that is.<br /><br />And forces ARE acting on you. Your clothes try to fly off due to the resistance of the air. And while you may be weightless, you're not massless, and you're happily falling (if you started high enough) at terminal velocity.<br /><br />If you think about the Earth's gravity as a well, you'll always fall "down" even if the Earth is above you. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[drwayne]

"The scales would read 0 Kilos so I would be experiencing no forces acting on me."<br /><br />No, gravity continues to act on you, you are in fact accelerating in your fall (neglecting air resistance of course).<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[qso1]

As Wayne put it:<br /><br />"A somewhat simpler picture of an orbit is this. The satellite is moving at a speed such that the it is falling at the same rate as the surface of the Earth is curving away from it".<br /><br />Excellent analogy! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[smartie]

Well done Bonzelite you are entirely correct. It is all to do with the principle of equivalence. How you describe this situation depends on which perspective you are describing. <br /> One may say we are under the influence of gravity from one perspective. But if I was in an unlit isolated box and not knowing I was in free fall I could also argue that from my perspective I am not under the influence of any force. I would be floating as if I were in space. <br /> Now most of the scientific community accepts that from our perspective we see the universe expanding away from us. Using the principle of equivalence it is just as true to say that the universe is a fixed sized system where we along with everything around us is contracting! Wow!The observable universe could correspond to an event horizon, and we along with everything around us could be shrinking (lorenz lenght contracting) as we fall down a universe sized gravity well. <br /> You see I am convinced that the universe is a blackhole. A blackhole that has no singularity. This is possible in a fractal universe. So are we all falling forever in a universe sized blackhole? What do you all think? This proposal of a shrinking matter universe to most people would be nonsense but I'd be interested to know where the logic goes wrong.<br /><br />http://www.martinelli.org/rexpansion/rExpansion.htm

 

[smartie]

I don't understand what z in the cosmological constant is, so I can't comment on that. However our shrinking would be at the speed of light relative to the limit of the observable universe. In the same way that galaxies appear to be moving away from us at the speed of light at the edge of the observable universe from our expanding universe universe perspective. <br /> Further I think we are observing the photon contracting at the speed of light away from us, and we are expanding away at the speed of light from the photons perspective. Confused sorry. <br />[IDEA UNDER CONSTRUCTION!]

 

[smartie]

One steady state theory suggests that matter is created in 'little bangs' everywhere, and these cause the universe to expand and eventually feed back onto itself triggering the production of the microscopic bangs in the first place. The advantage of this is that the overall universe system is eternal. <br /> Can you make any rational suggestion for why this theory should not be taken seriously. <br />One prediction I can make is that with steady state theory the furthest objects should on average appear the same age as objects in this part of the universe. Another is that the CBR in steady state should appear the same uniform temperature over all time periods.

 

[smartie]

Well I imagine that the little bangs are like quantum chaos, that average out at higher resolutions. Tune the telly of a channel and see the white noise. Part of this noise comes from the little bangs you can never get rid of it. Another name for it is zero point radiation. No matter how much you try you never can remove this ZPR from a vacuum, even near absolute zero temperatures. <br /><br /> Good point about the Quasars. I admit I don't know why there are none less than 1billion lyrs. However do all the galaxies observed in Hubbles deep field vision look newly formed?<br /> I acknowledge that there difficulties with Steady state but there are also problems with the Big Bang theory, such as what caused the big bang. Merging the theories together I think is progress in the right direction. <br /><br />Question: About the Quasars, if we take any Quasar as a reference point how far away is the next nearest Quasar on average?

 

[smartie]

I've always got the impression that the deeper down in the sub-atomic we look the higher the amount of energy we observe. At infinitely small scales we have an infinite amount of energy.<br /> Here comes the silly bit..<br />I imagine that the above is true because the rate of Time increases towards smaller scales and decreases towards greater scales. If it didn't we would all be immersed in a big fireball

 

[bonzelite]

i will throw out that CBR is overrated and perhaps not anything but ambient radiation of spacetime. alone, it neither proves nor bolsters any such big bang event. how you get that it proves the big bang is like saying a styrofoam cup floating in a mud puddle proves that the contents have spilled from the cup. <br /><br />CBR may be the radiation of... let's say.... gravity, for example. but we cannot know that at this time. it may be a mean result of the entire cosmos going about it's daily business, ie, the din of the crowd heard at lunchtime. the universe is eating lunch all the time. you know what i mean? <br />------------<br />insofar as the earth rushing to the person inasmuch as the person rushes to earth, as far as i recall --common principle is that when you walk upon the earth, you are pushing down upon the earth as much as the earth pushes back upon the bottom of the feet. yes? isn't this essentially true? <br />-------------<br />about the universe being a black hole in light of the "relativity" of objects in motion against a background ---cool idea. but dunno. it's like a dream within a dream kind of idea. sort of. is this what you mean? <br /><br />or it's like when you're in a train car and you look out the window to see a train next to yours moving: are you moving and the outside train on the adjacent track is still? or is the other train moving and your train is still? for a few moments, it is difficult to tell until you look outside at the opposite side of the train car you're in.

 

[siarad]

As we are always at the centre of the Universe the Earth <i>must</i> move to-wards us, the centre can't move <img src="/images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

 

[smartie]

http://www.fractalcosmology.com/e-fractal11.htm<br /><br />This is the web site that influenced my idea of change in rate of time with scale. Yes I do mean that I think that clocks tick at different rates depending on scale.<br />Imagine standing in a shower with the curtain drawn. If you, together with everything around you were doubled in size how would you recognise any change had happened. One thing you would notice is that the droplets from the shower would appear to be moving in slow motion. And if you were wearing a waterproof watch either analogue or digital, it would be operating at half the normal rate of time. This of course ignores any change in the brain. Here's a question for you, if you were expanded to the same size as a galaxy how long would light take to pass you by, 10ms or 100,000years ? <br /> As regards Oblers Paradox there the solution is the same as the big bang model. The universe is expanding and then feeding back on to itself into the sub-atomic in a closed system. A conveyer belt is a good analogy to this. The advantage with this idea is that the infinities of the large and small appear to cancel each other out.

 

[bonzelite]

<font color="yellow"> What if a person on the other side of earth jumped in the same moment as you. Would earth rush up to the feet of both of them? <br /></font><br /><br />that is a very interesting continuation of the idea. i'd say yes. the two people on opposite sides of the earth would perturb the earth to expand out to each falling person, ie, tidal forces. but the earth is so much more massive than the people that the expansion would be barely detectable. <br /><br />by the way, Wikipedia is a shill for BB theory. you're only going to get mainstream science on there. of course it supports CBR for BB. you need to go to alternative sources of info to get any real rebuttal.

 

[bonzelite]

ok wait. say the moon falls around the earth. it can do this because of it's mass and distance from the earth. it then orbits. but really is falling, technically. the moon perturbs the earth's rotation slightly, tugging on it as it falls around the earth. <br /><br />a person is not in such orbit; they fall directly into the earth's surface. the earth vastly overtakes the person's mass. so the person is falling. and the person, like the moon, has mass. so the person, as they fall into the earth, must perturb the earth even in some measure of influence that is unbelievably tiny. <br /><br />yes?

 

[smartie]

Perhaps your right. But I did find aspects of the site interesting. <br /><br />I must admit that I still cannot explain the increase in radio sources at larger distances which I must admit bothers me. <br /><br />You'll have to excuse me for being too enthusiastic in sharing my thoughts. Perhaps it is not wise of me to debate my personal ideas in this forum. I am not intending to preach. I think I'll sit back and just view the posts instead for the moment.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br />

 

[bonzelite]

preach away. you'll only learn that way when others challenge you.

 

[smartie]

This thread was based on something I read in a book somewhere. I think it was called Hyperspace. Apparently Einstein beleived you were not falling from your perspective because from your point of view you were not under any force.... in free fall the scales are reading zero, you are weightless, you feel no G forces. You are from your perspective not accelerating and so can be regarded as being at rest. <br /><br />Funny things gravitational fields. You can be accellerating and be at rest at the same time from different perspectives.

 

[bonzelite]

is it true that a skydiver feels no g-force upon the body? <br /><br />

 

[SpaceKiwi]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>about falling, i do know it is technically true that the moon is falling around the earth ...<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Far be it for the liberal arts guy to comment on science stuff but, if I'm not very much mistaken, the Moon is spiraling very very slowly away from the Earth. Something in the order of a centimetre every hundred years, or similar, if memory serves. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em><font size="2" color="#ff0000">Who is this superhero?  Henry, the mild-mannered janitor ... could be!</font></em></p><p><em><font size="2">-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</font></em></p><p><font size="5">Bring Back The Black!</font></p> </div>

 

[drwayne]

"is it true that a skydiver feels no g-force upon the body?"<br /><br />No. There is a gravitational force is still acting on his body. The difference between the sky diver falling, and a person on the ground is that the force applied by the surface of the earth, the normal force is not in fact present.<br /><br />A sky diver in a real atmosphere can actually reach waht is called terminal velocity. At this velocity, the force due to air resistance cancels the force due to gravity, and the *net* force acting on the skydiver is zero. In that case, the skydiver no longer accelerates, and assumes essentially constant velocity.<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[evolution]

quite a good question you have put forward.<br /> if the earth has no garvity then you obiously will be floating in the but accoring to the columbs law very body in this universe attract very other body with the force directly propotional to its mass and inversly propotional to the distance between them. so if the earth is not attracting you you will not fall towards earth but you will start falling towards the other massly body.<br /> i hope this will answer your question.<br /><br />regards<br />Arsalan Munir.

 

[evolution]

hello<br /> what centre of the universe is to do with the falling bodies it does not explians the movement of any thing.