Gravity Lab
Newton's law of universal gravitation, applied to you: a = G·M / r² gives the acceleration a body produces at your position, and F = m·a gives the force on your mass. Distances come from the same calculated planetary positions used in the 3D view.
Used only for force (F = m·a). Acceleration values are independent of it.
Positions are computed from a single canonical UTC timestamp. Your local timezone is never used for the astronomy.
Sun
The Sun holds 99.86% of the Solar System's mass and dominates every orbit.
Suburban family home
Earth's surface gravity is 9.80665 m/s². Acceleration does not depend on your mass; the force you feel does.
Gravitational pull on you — logarithmic
10⁻¹³ → 10⁻¹ m/s²Each bar step covers a factor of ten. The Sun and Moon dominate everything else, and the planets sit many orders of magnitude below them because acceleration falls with the square of distance.
Reading these numbers
- Acceleration (m/s²) is what the body does to any object at your location, regardless of how heavy that object is.
- Force (N) is acceleration multiplied by your mass — double your mass and the force doubles.
- Because r is squared, moving twice as far away cuts the pull to a quarter. Earth–Mars distance changes by roughly a factor of seven over a synodic cycle, so Mars' pull on you varies by a factor of about fifty.
- A person standing a metre away from you produces an acceleration comparable to some planets, which is why physicists treat planetary tugs on a human body as negligible.