Gravitational force is never truly zero. If it has mass, it is pulling at you, though it may be so close to zero that you don’t realize it.
Gravitational force is never truly zero. If it has mass, it is pulling at you, though it may be so close to zero that you don’t realize it.
Wait, I thought gravity is not a “force” but the curvature of spacetime, so at some point the curvature gotta end or be disturbed by some other source nearby, right? A star so far away is not exerting any “force” on me as I already have two massive objects Earth and Sun twisting the spacetime around me so much. I could however be getting some gravitational waves from that star but not sure how strong they’d be or if they reach me at all (again given Sun and Earth).
(NOTE: I’m an engineer not a physicist so my understanding could all be wrong)
Eh. It’s not really a definite distinction. Even in GR you formulate effective potentials and the gradient on those potentials are still called forces. Then, what is a force on microscopic scale? It is the exchange of force mediators, like photons. If gravitons exists, then there is even a similar framework for defining a force on a microscopic level for electromagnetism as well as gravity. Furthermore, electromagnetism (qed) also has an interpretation as a curvature, as it is a gauge theory, just not a curvature of physical spacetime, and that does not disqualify if from being called a “force”.