May 2025
By Richard Fleming
Photo courtesy of Doug Nealy
Aging is mighty peculiar. Even a lifetime of prep work and experience does not fully prepare us old folks for what we encounter. Starting around age 65, give or take, we find ourselves entering a new world, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. We may look around and recognize our surroundings. But many aspects of our environment have changed. These alterations happen subtly, slowly. Eventually it becomes apparent that our roles, our interactions, our abilities, our path forward, all have shifted.
Growing old involves many phenomena we need to understand, including biology, cognition, economic status, cultural shifts, family dynamics, technological challenges, and others. But today I want to focus on a more limited, though very important topic. I want to discuss the nature of gravity.
Gravity is a weighty subject. It was first uncovered in 1670 by English physicist Robert Hooke. Isaac Newton subsequently developed a formula to describe how gravity operates. He said the force of gravitational attraction between two objects depends on the mass of each object and the distance between them. Albert Einstein later introduced some modifications to the concept of gravity, but the initial idea has largely stood the test of time.
Until now.
In analyzing gravity, these brilliant scientists neglected to include a third key element: the age of objects significantly influences the force that gravity exerts upon them.
Let me explain. As I advance further into my senior years, it has become very apparent that gravity’s force is not constant over time. Older objects – especially human beings – are subject to stronger gravitational force than younger objects. And the older a person gets, the more the gravitational force increases. Physical objects can also be impacted, as I will explain below.
This strengthening of gravitational fields shows up in many realms.
First, the human body. Many parts of my physical structure are being pulled downwards towards the center of the earth more powerfully than when I was younger. My facial skin, my neck, my abdomen, my rear end – all of them are sagging. And the drooping is progressing. Also, my spine is tending to bend forward more. I have lost an inch in height.
What accounts for these phenomena? There is no doubt they are due to my body experiencing a stronger gravitational force now than it did several decades ago. And what would cause gravity to become more powerful?
Newton’s formula only looked at two elements, mass and distance. These two elements do not explain the way my body is increasingly sagging downward as the years pass by. My face does not weigh more now than earlier in life. Ditto for my neck. OK, my abdomen has a tad more mass than before, but surely its increased sagging is not due strictly to that fact. And the distance between me and the center of the earth has not changed.
My hypothesis, which I have validated through extensive real world observations of people in older age groups, is that gravity exerts a stronger force on people as they age, even if their mass and the earth’s mass remain constant, and the distance between them does not change.
* * *
The increasing force of gravity with age shows up in other aspects of daily living as well. Many objects that older people interact with grow heavier over time. The same pots and pans we have used for years for cooking weigh more now than they used to. And have you noticed that a large soup pot filled with liquid weighs much more than it did before? The mass of the soup stock has not changed, so why is it heavier now? Packed suitcases weigh more now and are harder to lug around, even when they contain the same amount of clothes. Two-year-old granddaughters are heavier now than ten years ago, even though scales purport to show they had the same weight at the same age.
What accounts for this phenomenon? I’m not a physicist, so I can only guess. My suspicion is that the increased gravitational force which affects people as they age is transmitted to any object the older person touches. As soon as an oldster comes in contact with something, gravity’s force on that physical object increases commensurate with its increased force on the old person touching it, and this happens immediately. Makes sense, right?
* * *
Growing old is both challenging and wondrous. We encounter many new and unexpected developments, some good, and some not. Some are foreseeable, and some are not.
There are many days when the challenges of navigating the novel land of aging appear overwhelming. The benefits can seem far removed. But I try to approach growing old with a sense of optimism. I like to see the glass as one-quarter full. And I celebrate the magical discoveries we sometimes stumble upon. When I was younger, I would never have thought that gravity’s force would become stronger as we age. Just imagine, simply by growing old, we have forced the modification of a 400-year old law of physics.
Boomers should consider submitting our application for the Nobel Prize in Physics. But that will need to wait until after we figure out how to heft that box of rarely-used household goods onto the top shelf at the back of the closet.
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