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I am searching my peanut-sized brain for memories of high-school physics...spitballs ...the clingy sweater on the pigtailed girl ... sorry ... ah yes!
It went something like this: There is no "centrifugal force", inertia makes a body continue in a straight line once it has been set in motion, but the rope and the earth's gravity prevent that (disregarding friction). There was nothing about "pull of all the distant stars and planets". In fact, we were told that astrology was laughable precisely any gravity effect from the planets or stars was so immeasurably small as to be entirely negligible.
Was I told wrong, or this journalist full of it?
The Theory of General Relativity extends this principle to accelerated frames of reference (i.e. your velocity and acceleration relative to some other observer should be irrelevant). For instance, if you're in a rocket accelerating at 50 m/s^2 (relative to the earth), you should get the same results if you make your measurements on the assumption that the rocket is standing still and the entire universe is accelerating at 50 m/s^2 in the opposite direction.
However, the first observation you'd make in such a situation is that you're getting squashed under 5 Gs. This must be explained in a manner consistent with either frame of reference. If we use a frame of reference in which the rocket is accelerating, then the G effects come from the fact that the couch you're sitting in is exerting a force upon you to make you accelerate along with it. If we use a frame of reference in which the rocket is standing still and the rest of the universe is accelerating, then the G effects come from gravitational effects produced by accelerating the entire universe at 50 m/s^2.
I've paged Physicist in case I garbled the explanation.