Flat Earth Follies: Gravity is SO STRONG it can hold all the world's oceans, but SO WEAK a butterfly is stronger, LOL stupid Gravity believers

I've kind of avoided this because it's mostly irrelevant to Flat Earth and it just shows a supreme level of stupidity on the part of the person parroting this canard.

But it keeps coming up so here we go...

The acceleration of gravity on Earth is little g = 9.8 m/s/s
The FORCE of gravity is Mass *TIMES* little g

You can drop balls from various heights and VERIFY this yourself very easily. Even most cell phones now come with high speed cameras.



Unless the mass is acting as a rigid body with other mass then you treat it by itself.

Water is NOT a rigid body (the other molecules do tug a tiny bit on each other - so you do have to break the weak surface tension) but for the most part the force of gravity acting on a water molecule (18 mass unit) is 3×10^-23 grams * 9.8 m/s/s

So that gives you ~ 2.94×10^-25 Newtons of force.

Let me write that out for you: 0.000000000000000000000000294 NEWTONS. 1 Newton is the force on Earth from 101.972 grams of mass.

A big rock is closer to a rigid body so when you try to lift it, you also have to lift the whole mass at once. So that might be 10 Newtons, or 100 Newtons, or 1000's of Newtons of force. Eventually the mass reaches a point where the collective force exceeds the static body forces of the rock itself and it squishes itself into a SPHEROID WHICH IS WHY THE GIANT EARTH IS A SPHEROID.

Furthermore, electrochemical energy is fairly easy to harness in bulk which allows muscles to create forces that far exceed those of the (little g * Mass) -- so you can jump a little bit but then fall back down while tiny birds with hollow bones can generate sufficient forces to stay airborne a little longer.

So yeah, that's why this Flat Earth Meme makes no sense.