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What is Escape Velocity?
When your list of shows to watch starts growing faster than you can watch them.
“I keep finding new shows. At this rate, I’ll never be able to finish them all! I think I’ve hit watchlist escape velocity.”
Escape Velocity - video
Escape Velocity - what is it?
It occurs when income earned from your investments is consistently greater than your spending, allowing you to live off of your savings indefinitely.
I'll retire once I've achieved financial escape velocity.
What does "Escape Velocity" mean?
Escape Velocity in science is a theory about gravity and picking up enough speed to escape the Earth's atmosphere.
In philosophy it's that moment in your life when enough things are going right that you can finally break free from your chains.
"Today, I let go of all my past pain-- I've finally reached Escape Velocity."
Escape Velocity - what does it mean?
Escape Velocity:
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if you throw an object straight up, it will rise until the the negative acceleration of gravity stops it, then returns it to Earth. Gravity's force diminishes as distance from the center of the Earth increases, however. So if you can throw the object with enough initial upward velocity so that gravity's decreasing force can never quite slow it to a complete stop, its decreasing velocity can always be just high enough to overcome gravity's pull. The initial velocity needed to achieve that condition is called escape velocity.
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From the surface of the Earth, escape velocity (ignoring air friction) is about 7 miles per second, or 25,000 miles per hour. Given that initial speed, an object needs no additional force applied to completely escape Earth's gravity
1/2 mv2 = GMm/R
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Where m is the mass of the object, M mass of the earth, G is the gravitational constant, R is the radius of the earth, and v is the escape velocity. It simplifies to:
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v = sqrt(2GM/R)
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or
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v = sqrt(2gR)
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Where g is acceleration of gravity on the earth's surface.
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The value evaluates to be approximately:
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11100 m/s
40200 km/h
25000 mi/h