What is Gravity?

 So what exactly is gravity?

We define gravity in many ways, including stating that it's a "force" in the universe exhumed by massive objects but  Albert Einstein defined gravity as - it was a "consequence" of the bending of spacetime. I'm sure you have your own ways to describe what it is and what it isn't, but the technical definition is that it is: "a natural phenomenon by which all the matters with mass or energy including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light (it is a form of energy) are brought toward (or gravitate toward) one another." To put it in your perspective, every object, even you and I, have our own personal gravity field. The problem is that while we do exert our own gravity, it pales in comparison to what the Earth's is. Thus, when two people stand next to each other, the lighter person doesn't get pulled directly into the other person, because Earth's gravity overrides that. The Earth as a whole has such a strong gravity that it not only is able to keep the moon in the space around it, but also bring it nto an orbit. Through that orbit we get a lot of things happening, including day and night. Which is due in part to gravity. Just as important, the sun in our solar system,and virtually every star in the universe, exerts gravity around it in such a way that it creates solar systems by exerting its own gravity in such a way that it causes the other planets (which again have gravities of their own) to fall in line and go into an orbit that it dictates. So as you can see, gravity has a lot of effects, even if you don't witness it first hand. 

 What are the effects of Gravity? 

 Gravity impacts just about everything in its path. Which is why it's no doubt, it is one of the most important fundamental forces in the universe, and does a lot more than you might think. First, there's the obvious one, the Earth's gravity keeps you in check and keeps you on the ground. Should that not be the case, then you would literally float up into the sky, and then into space, where we would die?  It's also keeps the gasses that we breathe in the confines of its atmosphere. If there were no gravity there wouldn't be any air to breathe because it would  keep going out into space instead of going in a cycle of sky to ground. But what about the moon? It's other thing that it has its own gravity and it exerts it on the Earth in its own way. How? Well, while it doesn't affect us as people, it does affect the oceans of our world. Depending on the closeness of the moon and what "phase" it's in, it can drastically affect the waters and cause massive waves, huge storms,and more. Not so much, there are events known as "Super moons" where the moon gets so close to the Earth that it causes massive disruptions in the oceans. One of these events was even caught on camera during the series Deadliest Catch where the waves were much bigger than they should've been. Another downside to the gravity of the Earth is that it makes it rather hard to get out of the atmosphere. Obviously we can't just jump out, or even slingshot out. We have to go incredible speeds in order to break through Earth's gravity and the atmosphere to get into space. It's about Mach 33, and space shuttles and craft have to make sure they go that fast otherwise they crash and burn. 

 Space And Microgravity.

Few things which  we can only learn via through and error and testing are the case when humans were exposed to microgravity in space in the long-term. Credits to the ISS that lies in orbit above the Earth. When you think about it, humans had only been exposed to zero or microgravity for a few days, or maybe a week during the initial space missions and even the Apollo space missions that took people to the moon. On the surface, it didn't affect them that much because there is a "buffer zone" for what the body can endure without any gravity around. But upon experiencing it for longer via the International Space Station, it was revealed that microgravity can cause your bones to become brittle. We couldn't have imagined it without real experiment, could we?  The Earth's gravity puts pressure on our bodies and especially our bones. This helps them to stay strong long term. Since Earth's gravity is constant, we being on the planet means our body gets stronger learning that it has to deal with the strength of gravity weighing down on it. So the longer we are in space, or in micro gravity, the more brittle and weak your bones, and thus your body, will get since there's no gravity to weigh you down in the literal sense. But there's no need to panic, because after humanity discovered this, they were able to figure out how to work around this. Including having astronauts on the ISS do rigorous exercise to counteract the effects of microgravity. And further tests are being done to help prevent this when we got to colonize other worlds. Let this be proof to you though that while gravity may seem annoying at times, it's helping keep your body together and strong. Without it? Weird things can happen.

 G-Force.

 As noted, Earth's gravity is a constant force for a given height. However, there are ways to manipulate gravity in order to push it to its limits, and even change how the human body is affected by it. The ways to manipulate Earth's gravity can also cause the human body to experience things known as G-Forces. G-Force is defined as "a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g equal to the conventional value of gravitational acceleration on Earth, g, of about 9.8 m/s2." 1 g is Earth's gravity, so manipulating it in the positive makes you feel like you're weighing MORE than what Earth's gravity is usually putting on your body. In contrast, going into the Zero-G or negative makes you feel weightless. We feel G-Forces in many different places in the world. Such as in an elevator where if we go down fast enough, we think that we're weightless though obviously we're not on the ground. We also feel them on roller coasters as we're speeding down them and around them. The speed we're going contributes to the extra pressures of our body.

 Black Holes.

If you wish to know about one of the biggest forces of gravity in the universe today, there is only one thing to look at. That would be the Black Hole. Black Holes are the wonders of nature that are created by a dying stars (and certain other things) that have gravity so intense that it has literally collapsed upon itself to the extent that it can create a gravity field that makes light unable to escape it. Yeah, literally light cannot escape the pull of a Black Hole! That's terrifying. Anything caught in a Black Hole will find themselves stretched infinitely until they are a string of atoms, all because of the power of its gravity field. If you still aren't scared, there are Black Holes all over the universe, and we should consider ourselves lucky there isn't one immediately close to our solar system, because if there was, it would be bad. I wouldn't say the gravity in this case is evil but yeah, the gravity of a black hole is evil!