Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2021

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021 to the center of the planet, but we don’t fall into it because, for exam- ple, the chair we are on exerts an equal pressure on our backside in the opposite direction; the same that the floor of the house exerts on the chair; the same that the Earth’s surface exerts on the home. Apart from a little back, buttocks, or foot pain, any fall can’t happen to us any worse in the range of domestic ac- celerations, unless you fall from a balcony, window or into a stairwell. If we leave our house, we can begin to experience different types of ac- celeration, such as the one that glues us to the back of the seat of an airplane during take-off. The seat pushes us forward because it is inte- grated with the rest of the airplane, which in turn is pushed forward by the air violently expelled by the en- gines in the opposite direction. On scheduled flights, acceleration is a negligible factor, but if we trans- fer the discussion to military super- sonic jets, the force exerted on the pilot’s body during sudden acceler- ations begins to be a factor to be definitely taken into consideration. That factor, called “g-force”, is gen- erally quantified with a multiple of 1, where 1 is the acceleration value that the Earth’s gravitational field