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Newton's third law states that whenever a force acts on you, you act on it with the same force, just with an opposite direction(except it's stated a little fancier). Now if an apple is falling through the air, it is falling because the gravity is pulling it downwards, what exactly is the reaction that the apple applies to the gravity?

(or even more broad examples like satellites that constantly get pulled downwards by gravity but never land due to centripetal force)

sammy gerbil
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Mohannad El-Nesr
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1 Answers1

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The earth pulls the apple toward the center of the earth. The apple pulls the earth toward the center of the apple. We just don't notice the effects of the earth being pulled upward, since it is a trillion trillion times more massive than the apple, and undergoes only a trillionth of a trillionth of the acceleration that the apple does.

Nuclear Hoagie
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