36 brainspacemagazine.com @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazineHow high can
you jump?
If there wasn’t any gravity, you
could jump all the way to the Moon.
Gravity is everywhere. It’s the
invisible force holding you to the
Earth. A force like gravity can make
objects move faster, slower, change
direction or change shape. It’s one
of many forces in the universe and
the reason why there are tides in the
ocean, rain falls and rivers flow to
the sea.What is it?
Gravity is a force, a strong one.
It is like the top dog of all forces.
Scientists theorize that gravity
created the Sun, the Earth and the
planets about five billion years ago.
That was when the universe was just
a mass of stuff, particles clumped
together to form small balls of matter,
or spheres. More particles kept
joining the spheres and they grew.
As they became bigger, the force
of gravity on each sphere became
stronger. That’s because gravity getsstronger with more stuff or mass.
The Sun is the biggest object in our
solar system with the most mass and
it has the strongest gravity. Its gravity
is so strong that it attracts orbiting
planets, comets and asteroids. In
fact, without gravity, our universe
would never have formed.
The planet with the most mass
and gravity is Jupiter. Its gravity is
about two and half times stronger
than Earth’s gravity. If you’re a good
jumper on Earth, you might only
jump a couple of inches on Jupiter.
If you jumped on the Moon, youscience