beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Gravitation doesn't 'suck', it's not like a suction pulling stuff in. It's to do with the mutual attraction between masses. For instance, the graviational pull of the sun doesn't mean stuff gets pulled in like that - bodies like planets are attracted to it, but they're also moving in their original trajectory. These two forces combine in to a circular (well... elliptical) orbit. If they start to slow down, then the forces are unbalanced and the orbit gets tighter, and if it continues to slow down, then the orbit destabalises. If they're reasonably similar, then their gravity attracts each other mutually and they end up orbiting each other. Pluto and Charon are an example of a mutually orbiting system. You can get a very close approximation with F = G x ((m₁ x m₂)/r²), where F is the magnitude of the gravitational force between two masses, G is the gravitational constant (which is 6.67428+0.00067 x 10^-11m³kg^-1s^-2, so you can see why they just write G XD), the two m ones are the two masses in the equation, and r is the distance between the two points.

...Er, sorry. What you do with words is what I do with equations. (See also: missing the point to focus on the sciencey bit XD)