WELCOME
Issue179
“If gravity was a little stronger, the Sun would have burned out billions of years ago”
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Nearly 30 years ago, a giant comet hit Jupiter after being pulled in by the gas giant’s gravity and was torn apart by its gravitational tidal forces. The biggest fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter on 18 July 1994 with the force of 6 million megatonnes of TNT, creating a dark spot in the upper atmosphere that can be seen in the image above: it was 7,500 miles wide – or about the same diameter as Earth. All of this was made possible by the force of gravity, and though space is where the most spectacular examples of gravity in action can be found, in this issue of How It Works, we’ll explore how this fundamental force affects the tiniest things in nature right up to cosmicscale events. What would the universe be like without gravity? Find out on page 28. Enjoy!