"Gravity and magnetism are not the same thing. In fact, they are totally and completely separate forces. Gravity is a force that acts between any two objects with mass. No matter what they are made of, both objects get pulled towards each other just because they have mass. The reason it seems like gravity only pulls you towards the earth is because the earth is so big that the pull from you on it isn’t enough to do much to its motion. Unlike gravity, which occurs between any objects, magnetism depends on specific properties of objects. Magnetism can either pull the two objects together or push them apart, depending on which way the magnets point. Most importantly, it depends on what is going on with the electrons in the material, since each electron is like a tiny magnet itself. Most materials are almost insensitive to magnetism because the electrons act like magnets pointing every which way, more or less equal numbers pulling or pushing." Source and more: http://van.physics.uiuc.edu/qa/listing.php?id=225

Interestingly you have picked a very interesting topic. This one bugs physicists as well (OK on a more fundamental level!) Four forces. Strong Nuclear, Weak Nuclear, Electromagnetism and Gravity. This makes things easy to work with. But physicists are simple creatures and so want to combine the forces and make things easier. A good example of this was the union (or realisation that they were the same thing) of electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism. Different aspects of the same thing. Now you can actually start to unify the four 'fundamental' forces. This is called Grand Unified Theory or GUT. You combine Electromagnetism and the Weak Nuclear (or just realise they are different aspects of the same thing like before) to get electroweak. This has been done. Then you combine the strong force with the electroweak ro get the (deep breath) QCD-electroweak or electrostrong force. Nearly done with that one. So next gravity yes? Gravity even looks like EM (the equations are very similar at first glance, inverse square laws and all that). But try as you might gravity will not go. It is aloof so far. Theories like M-Theory and Superstrings try to answer this but there is no answer yet. Gravity will not be unified with the other forces. Also gravity is actually incredibly feeble. Consider: With a tiny fridge magnet you can pick up paper clips off your desk. OK that tiny magnet with its TINY electromagnetic force is beating, without breaking a sweat, the gravitational pull of the entire planet Earth. Gravity is actually suspiciously weak and worries alot of physicists. So gravity and magnetism are pretty much as different as it is possible to be for now however one day physicists may say "there isn't a difference - they are merely different aspects of the same thing".

there are magnetic storms on the surface of the sun. gravity keeps the planets lined up.

At the temperatures common to our world, four discrete forces govern the interactions of matter - gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Each force is carried by a separate "messenger particle" unique to it and still being researched. Gravity Gravity, the weakest of the four forces, is about 10-36 times the strength of the strong force. This weakness is easily demonstrable - on a dry day, rub a comb across your shirt to give it static electricity, then hold it over a piece of paper on a desk. If you were successful, the piece of paper lifts off the desk. It takes an entire planet to keep the paper on the desk, but this force is easily overcome with everyday materials employing the electromagnetic force. However, the range of gravity is unlimited - every object in the universe exerts a gravitational force on everything else. The effects of gravity depend on two things: the mass of two bodies and the distance between them. In more precise terms, the attractive force between any two bodies is directly proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. The dominance of gravity on macroscopic scales is due not to any intrinsic strength but instead to its enormous range and constant attractive nature, especially as compared to the other forces. These properties of gravity have made it extremely difficult to incorporate gravity into modern theoretical frameworks. Electromagnetism The electromagnetic force is actually second in effective strength only to the strong force, but it is listed out of order here because it, like gravity, is more familiar to most people. Its strength is less than 1% of that of the strong force, but it, like gravity, has infinite range. However, unlike gravity, the electromagnetism has both attractive and repulsive properties that can combine or cancel each other out. Whereas gravity is always attractive, electromagnetism comes in two charges: positive and negative. Two positive or two negative things will repel each other, but one positive and one negative attract each other. This can be neatly illustrated by magnets: two of the same "pole" will repel each other, but two opposite poles attract each other. This is the principle that keeps atoms together: the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons attract each other. This is also the principle of atomic size: more electrons have greater repulsive force, so atoms with more electrons are larger because of the electrons' mutual repulsion. Similarly, atoms with larger nuclei and the same number of electrons are smaller overall because they exert a greater attractive force on the electrons. http://library.thinkquest.org/27930/forces.htm Click on the images.

Gravity and magnetism are linked together with the magnetization constant, which is a vector quantity. Therefore gravity and magnetism are consequences of the same physical laws, expressed in a different way. According to some authors gravity and magnetism can be packed in one sole theory with same governing equations and algorithms(Horst Holstein, gravimagnetic similarity,2000).

1) "Unlike gravity, which occurs between any objects, magnetism depends on specific properties of objects. Magnetism can either pull the two objects together or push them apart, depending on which way the magnets point. Most importantly, it depends on what is going on with the electrons in the material, since each electron is like a tiny magnet itself. Most materials are almost insensitive to magnetism because the electrons act like magnets pointing every which way, more or less equal numbers pulling or pushing." Source and further information: http://www.whps.org/schools/hall/departments/science/documents/capt2009/D6%20current%20and%20magentism.doc Further information: - "May the force be with you": http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/education/activities/pdf/May_the_Force.pdf - "How does Nikola Tesla's anti-gravity machine work?": http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_Nikola_Tesla's_anti-gravity_machine_work - "Kundalini in the Physical World": http://books.google.com/books?id=opw9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq="difference+between+gravity+and+magnetism"&source=bl&ots=a29WWIC_4L&sig=HsuSSvUaxQTqRUdEh1iuKA6b8UY&hl=en&ei=mdLKSYfGK9WKsAaTrZW0CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result 2) "In physics, magnetism is one of the phenomena by which materials exert attractive or repulsive forces on other materials. Some well-known materials that exhibit easily detectable magnetic properties (called magnets) are nickel, iron, cobalt, gadolinium and their alloys; however, all materials are influenced to greater or lesser degree by the presence of a magnetic field. Magnetism also has other definitions/descriptions in physics, particularly as one of the two components of electromagnetic waves such as light." "As a consequence of Einstein's theory of special relativity, electricity and magnetism are understood to be fundamentally interlinked. Both magnetism lacking electricity, and electricity without magnetism, are inconsistent with special relativity, due to such effects as length contraction, time dilation, and the fact that the magnetic force is velocity-dependent. However, when both electricity and magnetism are taken into account, the resulting theory (electromagnetism) is fully consistent with special relativity. In particular, a phenomenon that appears purely electric to one observer may be purely magnetic to another, or more generally the relative contributions of electricity and magnetism are dependent on the frame of reference. Thus, special relativity "mixes" electricity and magnetism into a single, inseparable phenomenon called electromagnetism (analogous to how general relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime)." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetism 3) "A non-contact force is any force applied to an object by another body that is not in direct contact with it. The most common example of a non-contact force is gravity. A non-contact force is different from a contact force, which is a force applied to a body by another body that is in contact with it. However it is to be noted that the origin of all contact forces can be traced to non-contact forces. Examples of non-contact forces include: - Gravity, a non-contact force between two objects. The force exerted on each body by the other through gravity is proportional to the mass of the first body times the mass of the second body divided by the square of the distance between them. The direction of the force is from the body acted on towards the body applying the force. A human body's weight is a non-contact force exerted by the Earth on their mass. - Magnetism, a unique non-contact force similar to gravity that generally acts to produce a stronger force over much shorter distances, and only affects specific materials. Magnetism can produce a force towards or away from the magnet. - Strong nuclear force: Unlike Gravity and electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force is a short distance force that takes place between fundamental particles within a nucleus. It is charge independent and acts equally between a proton and a proton, a neutron and a neutron and a proton and a neutron. The strong nuclear force is the strongest force in nature; however, it's range is small (acting only over distances of the order of 10-15 m) - Weak nuclear force: The weak nuclear force appears only in certain nuclear processes like β decay of a nucleus, in which the nucleus emits a β particle and an uncharged particle called a neutrino. Both the strong and weak forces form an important part of quantum mechanics." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-contact_force 4) "Gravitomagnetism (sometimes Gravitoelectromagnetism, abbreviated GEM), refers to a set of formal analogies between Maxwell's field equations and an approximation, valid under certain conditions, to the Einstein field equations for general relativity. The most common version of GEM is valid only far from isolated sources, and for slowly moving test particles." "This approximate reformulation of gravitation as described by general relativity makes a "fictitious force" appear in a frame of reference different from a moving, gravitating body. By analogy with electromagnetism, this fictitious force is called the gravitomagnetic force, since it arises in the same way that a moving electric charge creates a magnetic field, the analogous "fictitious force" in special relativity. The main consequence of the gravitomagnetic force, or acceleration, is that a free-falling object near a massive rotating object will itself rotate. This prediction, often loosely referred to as a gravitomagnetic effect, is among the last basic predictions of general relativity yet to be directly tested." "Incomplete understanding of the meaning of the similarity of the gravitomagnetic formulas, above, and Maxwell's equations for (real) electricity and magnetism have given rise to fringe physics. Use of the gravitomagnetic analogy for a simplified form of the Einstein field equations, on the other hand, is firmly part of General Relativity. It is an approximation to the current standard theory of gravitation, and has testable predictions, which are in the final stages of being directly tested by the Gravity Probe B experiment. Despite the use of the word magnetism in gravitomagnetism, and despite the similarity of the GEM force laws to the (real) electromagnetic force law, gravitomagnetism should not be confused with any of the following: - Claims to have constructed anti-gravity devices; - Eugene Podkletnov's claims to have constructed gravity-shielding devices and gravitational reflection beams. - Any proposal to produce gravitation using electrical circuits." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitomagnetism