Are you talking about a body in orbit? How the orbit gets smaller (decays) as the ‘moon’ decelerates? Basically why does gravity pull things in?
In general the 'least resistance ’ idea usually comes down to the first and second laws of thermodynamics - 1. Energy can never be created or destroyed in a closed system, just transformed and 2. Everything tends towards maximum entropy minimum energy (rocks don’t roll uphill). These are often taken as fundamental and all the why’s come from them. Why? Entropy baby.
Entropy is the messiness of the energy. An imperfect analogy is that if you drop a glass on the floor it will shatter. There is the same amount of mass energy in the floor and glass before and after but it’s distributed and won’t go back together again as easily as it smashed. But I think I took us on a side quest. Sorry!
Are you talking about a body in orbit? How the orbit gets smaller (decays) as the ‘moon’ decelerates? Basically why does gravity pull things in?
In general the 'least resistance ’ idea usually comes down to the first and second laws of thermodynamics - 1. Energy can never be created or destroyed in a closed system, just transformed and 2. Everything tends towards maximum entropy minimum energy (rocks don’t roll uphill). These are often taken as fundamental and all the why’s come from them. Why? Entropy baby.
I’m talking big distances
and if mass/energy is neither created nor destroyed then what is entropy?
Entropy is the messiness of the energy. An imperfect analogy is that if you drop a glass on the floor it will shatter. There is the same amount of mass energy in the floor and glass before and after but it’s distributed and won’t go back together again as easily as it smashed. But I think I took us on a side quest. Sorry!
it’s only messy in our eyes
also, by falling I mean movement, all movement is falling ie, travelling on a path of least resistance