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I repeated this spoon drop experiment just now and thought about it a bit. I'm astounded by the concept of gravity, and even more so that it "weakens" as we move away from the Earth took we get to zero gravity. I've got thinking about whether I'd get captured by the Sun's gravity - after all the Earth is hurtling around the Sun - until another planet were to come by, or by chance miss getting caught in any planet's gravity and drop out of the Solar system altogether. I also just wondered what causes gravity, whether it is possible to determine and conclude that there must be no gravity at a particular point away from the Earth - all while being seated at my chair.

Sorry, this isn't directly related to the overall discussion but I got so excited by my thoughts that I wanted to share.



And the wild part is, it never actually gets completely to zero, though it gets really close! And then read about lagrangian points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

So much fun.


There's a relevant quote from the book Anathem about that, but can't find it. Something about sequestering a bunch of monk-scientists with no particle accelerators or other tools, but they still figure out the nature of ultimate reality...




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