Electric current travels by the movement of electrons. As electrons are mass particles, therefore, gravity has a minute effect on their movement. Keeping this point in mind, one could think that electricity should travel faster downhill. However, this does not hold good in reality.
Gravity does have a significant effect on everything. We can consider a simple circuit of a flashlight, where electricity leaves one end of a battery and travels through the wire to the bulb, then through another wire back to the battery again. Even if one of these wires is uphill and the other one is downhill, the average speed through the circuit would remain the same.
Compared to their electric charge, the mass of electrons is tiny, so to have a significant effect of gravity, the field has to be super strong. Since electricity runs at speed comparable to the speed of light, the effect of gravity on electricity would be the same as that on traveling light. An extremely powerful gravitational field, like that of a black hole, would slow the propagation of a signal and reduce its energy but anything as week as the earth’s magnetic field would have no significant impact.
What are your views regarding this phenomenon? What do you think would be the consequences if gravity did have a considerable impact on the electron movement? Comment below!
