>>  Makes sense.
>
> No, no - not at all.
>

Sorry, I was in a rush and forgot the "Like Hell it does" icon.


> What happens is that Earth, by virtue of having mass, gobbles up space
> inside and around it. Always. Constantly. Whether there are any apples
> out there or not. (So does the apple, but that's negligible compared to
> Earth's dietary budget.) There's no acceleration or even movement
> involved there /per se/ - in the vicinity of matter, distances just
> shrink over time. Fast.
>
> If it was only for this mechanism, earth would shrivel to nothingness in
> a matter of... minutes? hours? Dunno, but certainly in less than a day.
> Space between the elementary particles would just shrink to zero.
>
> Fortunately, electromagnetic force comes to our rescue: The electron
> clouds of any two atoms in the universe repel each other. Partially this
> is compensated by the fact that the electron clouds of any atom  in the
> universe also attracts the nucleus of any other atom, but on average the
> net EM force is repelling. And there are a lot of atoms in the Earth. So
> the atoms making up earth constantly accelerate away from each other.
> Earth is exploding.
>

To my untutored eyes* that sounds* like stability.

Getting my metaphors a bit mixed. I know.

> Whoosh.
>
> We're riding an explosion that is the only thing standing between us and
> the formation of a black hole.
>

An explosion with an average velocity of 0 m/s?
Scary.

>
> Also, think of this: If you throw an apple, it moves through space in a
> /straight/ line - any apparent curvature of its trajectory is due to
> Earth's surface constantly accelerating upwards. Not towards the apple
> but away from Earth's center. In a lump of space that's busy shrinking.
>

If you say so. But consider using another inertial frame of reference. 
One that contains both the Earth and the apple. Which object, the Earth 
or the apple, travels a greater distance in the same time frame?
I hazard a guess that it will be the apple that has the greater velocity 
and thus acceleration.

Sorry, I wuz an enjuneer.

-- 

If you eat chocolate that you did not want to eat. Then it does not 
count as chocolate.

Sir Terry P.

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