ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Positive mass theorem

Okay kiddo, let's talk about something called the Positive Mass Theorem. This theorem is all about what happens when you have a really big piece of stuff, like a planet or a star, and you want to know how it's moving.

Here's the thing: everything in the universe has what we call "mass." Mass is what makes things heavy and what makes them move when other things push or pull on them. And when we talk about the Positive Mass Theorem, we're talking about something that tells us what happens when a big piece of stuff has a lot of mass.

So imagine you're playing with a really big ball. If you push it or throw it, it moves, right? And the harder you push or throw it, the faster it moves. But what if that ball was so big that it had its own gravity, like a planet or a star? Gravity is the force that pulls things towards each other, so if the ball had gravity, it would pull things towards it.

The Positive Mass Theorem tells us that when you have a really big piece of stuff like a planet or a star, it always has what we call "positive mass." This means that its mass is always greater than or equal to zero. Basically, this theorem says that really big things can't have negative mass, which would mean they have the opposite effect of gravity and push things away instead of pulling them towards it.

So why is this important? Well, scientists use the Positive Mass Theorem to help understand how big things move in space. By knowing that a piece of stuff always has positive mass, we can figure out things like how its gravitational pull affects other objects around it. And this helps us better understand the universe around us.

Does that help you understand the Positive Mass Theorem a bit better, kiddo?