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answers:
YKhan say: The actual answer is not known yet, but our current best hypothesis is that gravity exists to balance out energy concentrations in the universe. If you look at energy like a fluid, then a fluid always wants to even out in its concentration over its entire volume. If you have a little bit of extra concentration of fluid in one part, then that means that there is less concentration in the areas immediately around it. So other things are going to want to come in to fill the void in the areas of low concentration.
Now, another thing we've found out over the past century is that matter and energy are really the same thing. Matter is just a very concentrated & trapped form of energy. So if matter is a concentrated form of energy, then the space around it has a lower concentration of energy. This creates a well which attracts other energy to come settle into it. Usually what this means is that matter starts attracting other matter to fill the void around it. But all matter develops its own low-energy void around it, so if matter attracts other matter, they just join and become an even bigger concentration of energy and they have an even bigger void to fill around their combined mass.
So basically gravity is the void or the energy well around matter, which creates an attraction by wanting to be filled.
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Athena say: So the people on the other side of the earth from us don't fall off.
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Mr say: So we dont float off to space
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Logan say: Think about the universe as a plane(like, a field, or flexible floor). If you place a ball on this plane, it will dip into it, stretch it out. Think of if you had a big plane of spandex, and you placed a ball on it, what would happen? The ball would dip down into the spandex, and create a dip spreading outward. Then if you place a smaller ball, it would fall to the bigger ball because of the dip that the bigger one is creating. Look it up on YouTube, a great professor explains it visually very well.
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