OT: The 10th Demention

[Raapys]

Its gravitational potential energy. If the object falls down into any gravitational well, that turns back into kinertic energy.

So what's really being said is that graivty doesn't create or destroy energy, because it was always 'potentially' there? I.e., potential energy is being treated as existing energy.

Thanks alot for the detailed work explanation Fyron.

[Suicide Junkie]

It sounds like implying some wierd things there Raapys.

You do recognize that a spring and a bullet have a fixed amount of potential energy (which are commonly converted into kinetic energy and boing noises, and light, heat and kinetic energy respectively)
Same deal with separated objects in a gravitational field.
Same deal with magnets and electric charges.

[Raapys]

Hmm, I definitely see your point in the spring and bullet scenarios, where it's obvious that there is energy waiting to be released, but with gravity too?

To clarify my question: If we had a device that could read the potential energy we're talking about, then that device would generally, in the case of a compressed spring, come up with the amount of energy used to compress it, right?
But would you also be able to "find" the ( potential ) gravity energy?

I guess my point is, isn't the potential energy of the spring real, i.e. it's actually in the atoms and can be measured, while the potential gravity energy isn't ?

[Suicide Junkie]

Why would you think gravitational potential energy is not real?
You drop a bowling ball, and it crushes your toe. That's definitely real energy.

On the small scale, it simplifies to mgh. For larger scales you need integrals. But it is all very straightforward.

The only difference is scale. In the spring, you have electric forces pushing or pulling (but you have to look on the molecular scale). Gravity works on scales big enough to see and just pulls.

BTW, since gravity is always attractive, the arbitrary zero point is generally placed at infinity. So if you fall inwards, your gravitational potential becomes negative.
Conveniently, setting the point there means that if your total energy is positive, you can escape. If the total is negative, you're stuck in the gravity well unless you steal some energy from something else.

[GuyOfDoom]

I think what is trying to be said is that if we understood enough about gravity we could potential control it and generate a "limitless" supply of PE since gravity only weakens over distance and not time.

[Suicide Junkie]

*Sigh*

[GuyOfDoom]

I realize the point you're trying to get across, but the end all be all is the fact that the mechanism behind gravity is still a mystery. The definitions of energy are left intentionally vague because we don't understand them completely.

Gravity is a property of matter, but how is it "enforced." That's where gravitons come in.