Free-fall time
The free-fall time is the characteristic time that would
take a body to collapse under its own gravitational attrac-
tion, if no other forces existed to oppose the collapse. As
such, it plays a fundamental role in setting the timescale
for a wide variety of astrophysical processes—from star
formation to helioseismology to supernovae—in which
gravity plays a dominant role.
1 Derivation
1.1 Infall to a point source of gravity
It is relatively simple to derive the free-fall time by apply-
ing nothing more than Kepler’s Third Law of planetary
motion to a degenerate elliptic orbit. Consider a point
mass m a distance R from a point source of mass M
which falls radially inward to it. Crucially, Kepler’s Third
Law depends only on the semi-major axis of the orbit,
and does not depend on the eccentricity. A purely radial
trajectory is an example of a degenerate ellipse with an
eccentricity of 1 and semi-major axis R/2 . Therefore,
the time it would take a body to fall inward, turn around,
and return to its original position is the same as the period
of a circular orbit of radius R/2 , or
( )3/2
2π R πR3/2
torbit = √ =√ . its other extreme).
G(M + m) 2 2G(M + m)
To see that the semi-major axis is R/2 , we must examine
properties of orbits as they become increasingly elliptical.
Kepler’s First Law states that an orbit is an ellipse with the
center of mass as one focus. In the case of a very small
mass falling toward a very large mass M , the center of
mass is within the larger mass. The focus of an ellipse is
increasingly off-center with increasing ellipticity. In the
limiting case of a degenerate ellipse with an eccentricity
of 1, the orbit extends from the initial position of the in-
falling object ( R ) to the point source of mass M . In 1.2 Infall of a spherically-symmetric dis-
other words, the ellipse becomes a line of length R . The
semi-major axis is half the width of the ellipse along the
long axis, which in the degenerate case becomes R/2 .
If the free-falling body completed a full orbit, it would bution about the center, with an average mass density of
begin at distance R from the point source mass M , fall ρ ,
inward until it reached that point source, then turn around
and journey back to its original position. In real systems,
the point source mass isn't truly a point source and the in-
falling body eventually collides with some surface. Thus, ρ = 4πR3
it only completes half the orbit. But since the infalling
part of the orbit is symmetric to the hypothetical outgo-
ing portion of the orbit, we can simply divide the period
of the full orbit by two to attain the free-fall time (the time
along the infalling portion of the orbit).
π R3/2
tff = torbit /2 = √
2 2G(M + m)
This formula also follows from the formula for the falling
time as a function of position.
Note that torbit in the above equation, is the time for the
mass to fall in a highly eccentric orbit, make a “hairpin”
turn at the central mass at nearly zero radius distance,
and then returns to R when it repeats the very sharp turn.
This orbit corresponds to nearly linear motion back and
from distance R to distance 0. As noted above, this orbit
has only half as long a semimajor axis (R/2) as a cir-
cular orbit with radius R (where the semimajor axis is
R), and thus the period for the shorter high-eccentricity
“orbit” is that for one with an axis of R/2 and a total or-
bital pathlength of only twice the infall distance. Thus, by
Kepler’s third law, with half the semimajor axis radius it
thus takes only (1/2)3/2 = (1/8)1/2 as long a time period, as
the “corresponding” circular orbit that has a constant ra-
dius the same as the maximal radius of the eccentric orbit
(which goes to essentially zero radius from the primary at
The time to traverse half the distance R, which is the infall
time from R along an eccentric orbit, is the Kepler time
for a circular orbit of R/2 (not R), which is (1/32)1/2 times
the period P of the circular orbit at R. For example, the
time for an object in the orbit of the Earth around the
Sun, to fall into the√Sun if it were suddenly stopped in
orbit, would be P / 32 , where P is one year. This is
about 64.6 days.
tribution of mass
Now, consider a case where the mass M is not a point
mass, but is distributed in a spherically-symmetric distri-
3M
1
2 4 REFERENCES

where the volume of a sphere is: (4/3)πR3 .

Let us assume that the only force acting is gravity.
Then, as first demonstrated by Newton, and can easily be
demonstrated using the divergence theorem, the acceler-
ation of gravity at any given distance R from the center
of the sphere depends only upon the total mass contained
within R . The consequence of this result is that if one
imagined breaking the sphere up into a series of concen-
tric shells, each shell would collapse only subsequent to
the shells interior to it, and no shells cross during col-
lapse. As a result, the free-fall time of a massless particle
at R can be expressed solely in terms of the total mass M
interior to it. In terms of the average density interior to
R , the free-fall time is[1]

√
3π 1 1
tff = ≃ 0.5427 √ ≃ 66430 s √
32Gρ Gρ ρ

where the latter is in SI units.

This result is exactly the same as from the previous section
when : M ≫ m .

2 Applications
The free-fall time is a very useful estimate of the relevant
timescale for a number of astrophysical processes. To get
a sense of its application, we may write

√
35 min g
tff ≃ √ · .
ρ cm3

Here we have estimated the numerical value for the free-

fall time as roughly 35 minutes for a body of mean density
1 g/cm3 .

3 Comparison
For an object falling from infinity in a capture orbit, the
time it takes from a given position to fall to the central
point mass is the same as the free-fall time, except for a
4
constant 3π ≈ 0.42.

4 References
[1] Stellar Structure and Evolution Kippenhan, Rudolf;
Weigert, Alfred. Springer-Verlag, 1994, 3rd Ed. p.257
ISBN 3-540-58013-1

• Galactic dynamics Binney, James; Tremaine, Scott.

Princeton University Press, 1987.