Timeline for Can two particles ever be in equilibrium under their mutual gravitational forces alone?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Jul 23 at 17:06 | comment | added | controlgroup | @Solidification Even in Newtonian mechanics, a particle cannot "tell" that it is experiencing any force. You can trivially fix a reference frame either on an arbitrary point, where the particle is obviously accelerating, or on the particle itself, where the laws of physics still hold true. And particles don't have defined "equilibria" anyway. An equilibrium is a state of a system, not of an individual particle. Particles can be in stable or metastable or unstable states, but they can only be part of an equilibrium. | |
| Jul 23 at 17:04 | comment | added | Solidification | Please do not bring general relativity or spacetime. This question is about Newtonian gravity only where gravity is a force | |
| Jul 23 at 17:02 | comment | added | controlgroup | @Solidification Single particles are always "in equilibrium". A particle (under the influence of only gravitation) always sees itself as experiencing zero net force and tracing out a perfectly-straight line in spacetime, so saying that a particle is then "in equilibrium" is meaningless. | |
| Jul 23 at 16:59 | comment | added | Solidification | Here I am asking whether equilibrium is possible for individual particles of the system. Not of the system as a whole. For example, if you have a system of three particles, each of mass m, and placed on a line with equal distance, the particle on the middle will be in equilibrium. Not stable though. | |
| Jul 23 at 16:56 | history | answered | controlgroup | CC BY-SA 4.0 |