Pluto's gravitational pull on a person on the Earth's surface?

Question

My Physics teacher stated that Pluto has a gravitational pull on objects on Earth, namely humans. Is this true? What is the free-fall acceleration of Pluto with respect to being on the Earth's surface? (i.e. the Earth's free-fall acceleration is 9.8 m/s*s).

Answer 1

This is true. Newton's law of universal gravitation says everything attracts everything. To get the free-fall acceleration of some object on Earth towards Pluto, take Newton's law and divide by the object's mass to get $$a=\frac{F}{m}=\frac{GM}{r^2}.$$ Subbing in reasonable values - $M=0.002$ Earth masses, and $r$ between 29 and 49 AU you get something like $10^{-14}\textrm{ m s}^{-2}$.

Answer 2

I am not a physicist but this will answer your query; According to Newton's law of universal gravitation every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

$F=G\frac{m_{1}m_{2}}{r^{2}}$

for example: lets say r is the distance between earth and pluto, G the universal gravitation constant, m1 is the mass of pluto and m2 be the mass of a human on earth, we can then calculate the gravitational force exerted by m1 to m2.

you can also refer this site http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circles/u6l3c.cfm