Article March 10, 2008 Issue

THE 'GRAVITY' OF THE SITUATION

BY NATHAN A. TALBOT

GRAVITY HAS ITS UPS and downs. That is, I see both positives and negatives about it, such as when I bound out of bed in the morning. I don't crash my head against the ceiling. Thanks, gravity. On the other hand, I note some downsides, too, such as when something fell on my bare foot the other day. Most of us don't think a lot about Sir Isaac Newton and what he discovered—unless, perhaps, we have some unpleasant encounter with the earth.

If you're an astronomer, it's probably important for you to know that the force of gravity is proportional to the mass of an object, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects. But for someone like myself, well, I can't say I give all that much thought to this important fact. And yet, it obviously has some bearing on the way my body moves around, the way the earth moves, even the positioning of our solar system.

But there's an even larger issue here.

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