I remember at school drawing force diagrams. Even in dynamic situations they had forces that balanced and enabled my doing the required calculations. A typical scenario was as per the diagram of a cyclist following a curved path. On it centrifugal force equaled centripetal force and weight was balanced by the opposing normal thrust up from the ground.
I remember at college our mechanics lecturer asking us to draw just such a diagram showing only the forces that acted on cycle and rider. Without exception everyone drew a diagram like that shown. We had come together from various parts of the country but all of us had learnt of centrifugal force and not one of us had questioned its reality.
The lecturer explained that there was no centrifugal force. Centrifugal force was a fictitious force created to establish a mathematical force balance. Centripetal force was the only horizontal force between road and tyre. It was what enabled the rider and cycle to move along a curved path, accelerating away from their would be straight line velocity.
I tell the above tale because mathematics can be a wonderful tool but it sometimes doesn’t truly represent reality. On the above diagram we also show the weight of bike and rider acting toward the earth and most described as a force of gravity. Newton saw gravity as a force that pulled objects down toward earth. Einstein said that there was no gravity force, observing that if someone is in free fall having stepped off a building they would feel no force moving them down. In fact the only force they would feel is that of the air resistance to their fall. Einstein’s explanation for gravity came in his theory of general relativity that had massive bodies warping space time
Einstein was right in saying there is no external downward force acting on someone stepping off a building. However he failed to realise that a desire for the earth and its emitted energies is present in the particles of everything above the earth.
Particle desires for photons are responsible for the curved motions of space bodies toward the photon energies (that are space-time) but also for the curving of photon flows toward structural particles.
Stood on a building, building particles exchange energies with those in a person. They do so because neither of the particle structures that make for the building and the person’ want change. The building particles are aware of and desire earth energies as do those in the person. The interacting energies between building and person hold the person up but in stepping off the building the person’s particles are free to seek earth energies.
The attraction toward the earth is on a per particle basis and is one in which the descending particles are absorbing earth emitted energies, distributing them to other particles and emitting them, mostly upward into space. Think of this, not as a movement of all of the structure particles as one rigid object, but as the vibrating motions of energy connected particles that are also vibrating toward earth to satisfy their limited desires. This particle based desire for earth’s energy emissions results is an accelerating motion independent of the person’s or of any falling body’s particle numbers (mass).
Attractions between particle structures are not limited to massive bodies. See how raindrops cling to window panes. The smoothness of the pane enables many raindrop particles to energy engage with the pane particles. Raindrop particles can energy benefit by coming together and interacting with window pane energies, even though they are aware of and desire earth energies. Note how if they grow too big so that some of their particles are at greater distances from the window, they may move toward the earth or break apart with one part moving toward the earth and the other remaining linked to the window. Whatever they do it will be because that action best suits them.
The earth in space is a particle structure travelling at speed and in a direction that would take it away from the sun, but its particles desire photon energies and the sun as a particle structure is releasing photon energies. Consequently many earth particles are attracted toward the sun, drawing the other energy linked particles of the earth with them. However many particles moving toward the sun start to get energies in excess of needs and now want away from those photon excesses. Particle energy desires are at the heart of the orbital motion of earth about the sun.
We humans are energy structures just as the chair we sit on is an energy structure. When we sit on it, its energy structure reacts to our energy structure and we feel its pushing up on our bottoms. Neither the chair nor our particles want the higher photon energy levels associated with their getting too close and so the closer particles get the more highly they energy resist the approach.
In the chair every energy linked particle will have reacted, in some small way, to the photon pressures we have applied to its seat particles. The same applies in us but we have also evolved nerve systems that notify our brains of such pressures so that we can decide how to respond.
If you have ever fallen from any height you know how powerfully particle structures energy resist their contacting one another. In car collisions they cause structural damage. Yet within structures particles relatively distant in space are intent on staying together. When you try to pull any particle structure apart, it is the energy desires of the particles to remain as a structure so as to better process the energies of the environment that are opposing you.