Which is the superior power: Gravity or Electromagnetic force?
1 Answer
Of the two forces, the electromagnetic force is stronger .
Explanation:
Think of combing your hair. The small static charge built up on the comb is enough to lift your hair upward, against the gravitational pull of an entire planet. The electromagnetic force is about 20 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity.
However, there is an upper limit to electromagnetic force in the sense that charged objects attract other (oppositely) charged objects, which will neutralize them, and repel objects with a like charge. So, for example, if you tried to squeeze too many electrons into a jar, eventually the mutual repulsion of the electrons, and the attraction of nearby positive objects would cause it to discharge. Rather violently.
But with gravity, anything with mass attracts anything else with mass, so there is no real upper limit to how large a mass can grow. And the larger the mass, the greater it's gravity. There are supermassive black holes millions of times more massive than our sun.
As a result, gravity can act over great distances and is a dominant force at the astronomical scale (galaxies can be gravitationally bound to other galaxies millions of light years away), even though it is actually the weaker of the two forces.
