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in the neighborhood of the surface of the Earth.
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Here is where we are most of the time.
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So, if I shift my 0 to here,
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then by design, I've made U to be 0 on the surface of the Earth.
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Then, let me also measure the new coordinate this way, called h,
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which is the radial distance away from the RE.
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This is RE, this is RE + h.
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Then, I blow up this box.
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What do you find?
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I blow up the box with my newly shifted origin.
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Here is h,
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and here is the potential energy, looking like a straight line.