I am no expert on Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but seem to recall that it predicts that gravity, mass, space, and time are all inter-related. Furthermore, according to the theory, gravity is not constant, but varies. And I am here to tell you, with tongue firmly in cheek, that we have experimental evidence of variable gravity here in our own home!
First, gravity apparently varies from place to place in our home. Books don’t fall very often in our library, stuff stays put on the dresser in our bedroom, and we rarely see anything tumble to the floor in the living room, but gravity seems to be a little stronger in the kitchen. How do we know? Because that is where food, dishes, and any number of other things spill, drop, or fall. Every day. If we had a dog, he would be on constant cleanup duty in the kitchen. And the kitchen is where things not only fall, but break, if they are in any way breakable. Granite counters are not very forgiving when a dish hits it, and the extra gravity we seem to experience in the kitchen has cost us one juice glass after another.
Not only does it appear to vary in strength from one part of our home to another, gravity also seems to include some localized turbulence. We have good observational evidence that gravity in our garage has waves and swirls. How do we know? A green recycling box sits on the garage floor right outside the door. When we have a can, bottle, cardboard, or some other item to recycle, we simply open the door, lean out into the garage, and drop the item into the box. Easy, except that the apparent gravitational swirl makes the item almost always miss the box. It doesn’t matter how far we reach towards the box or how carefully we aim; the can or bottle almost always diverts away from the box and lands on the garage floor. I would think that an invisible elf batted it off course, but the only invisible elf I know of lives in my cell phone to meddle with the voice recognition and spell check software. I don’t think batting incoming cans away from the box is part of their contract, so it must be a swirl in the gravity.
So there you have two sets of observations to support the idea of variable gravity, or gravity with a swirl. What about you? Have you seen any such phenomena at your home?
