• Question: Why does the earth have the strongest gravitational pull?

    Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sarah Casewell

      Sarah Casewell answered on 13 Jun 2014:

      It doesn’t!

      The force of gravity depends on the mass of the 2 things involved and the distance between them squared.
      So for a human, our mass is very small, but the earth’s mass is very big, and the distance between us is small, hence we stay on the earth!
      The moon is very far away and less massive, so it doesn’t affect us that much, other than in creating tides.

      The Sun is very massive and far away, but it’s massive enough to keep the Earth and all the other planets in the solar system in orbit around it, even though some of the distances are large!

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 13 Jun 2014:

      Gravitational pull is stronger for objects with larger mass, and stronger the closer you are. So earth being massive it has quite a strong pull – the Moon is smaller and has less mass, hence the gravitational force on the surface of the moon is only 1/6th of that on Earth.

      But more massive objects, like the Sun for example, have stronger pull than the Earth.

      So if your weight on Earth is say 50kg, on the Sun you’d weigh 1.3 tonnes (tonnes!!!!). On a neutron star (a kind of very massive but very small star), you’d be 7000000000000 kg!!!

    • Photo: Natasha Stephen

      Natasha Stephen answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      It doesn’t! The sun is much, much stronger; it is what keeps our solar system in place!

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