Gravity is an effect that happens within finite gravitational fields. Gravitational fields have a finite range of influence (determined by the mass of a gravitational system) and are generated by mass - the larger the mass (such as the mass of a sun), the larger the gravitional field. Objects inside a gravitational field are attracted toward the object with the most mass inside the gravitational field. It is a one-way attraction felt by the low-mass objects toward the highest-mass object. Gravity only happens when lower-mass objects enter the gravitational field of some higher-mass object.
Gravitational fields take the shape of 3D spheres, these invisible fields can be encapsulated within other gravitational fields. For example, our moon is inside the Earths gravitational field. Once the moon first entered the Earths gravitational field, the Moon+Earth gravitational system increased the collective size of the Earth+Moon gravitational field. Together, the Earth+Moon gravitional field is encapsulated within the solar system gravitational field, and is moving as a unit toward the sun (in the same way the moon is moving toward the Earth, ending up in an orbit movement pattern in both cases). Likewise, the solar system gravitional field got larger (3d sphere expanded out) when the earth, moon, and all other celestial bodies in our solar system first entered our sun's gravitational field.
Our entire solar system has a gravitational field due to this, and it is entirely encapsulated in our galaxies gravitational field. Our solar system is moving toward the center of our galaxy, because it is the highest mass region in our galaxy's gravitational field. It does this in the form of an orbit, just like the moon orbiting the earth, and the earth+moon orbiting the sun.
Gravity, in a larger context, functions like a localized glue for each system like a galaxy, solar system, or planet-moon system, etc. The reason the entire universe has not conglomerated into a single ball of stuff due to gravity (and why it never will) is because everything is being shot out away from a central region (where things are dense like a ball), toward an infinitely larger expanse. As we move away from the dense region, more and more space comes between each collection of mass - gravity tries to hold it together, but eventually, everything has the fate of deconstructing into its individual parts. Our location, in this universe, can be likened to our galaxy, the milky way, being a single atom on the skin of a basketball - the center of basketball represents all of the denser matter, and outside the basketball is where we are headed, imagine the basketball constantly growing in volume, yet we remain the one atom on the skin - collections of matter slowly begin to break apart as the skin moves out due to expansion in volume. We are being pushed out uniformly, the entire skin of the basketball is moving in a spherical-explosion pattern in all directions. As very dense matter breaks apart, gravity recollects it into all kinds of structures - mostly atoms, then molecules, then even large structures like asteroids, planets, stars, galaxies, etc. The universe we know of is entirely generated by the 'deconstruction' of a very dense layer of the universe (the skin of the basketball), and this is a temporary state - eventually we will expand so far from the center of the basketball life as we know it will be impossible - stars and planets will simply be unable to form or maintain their structure, all the way until every individual atom is broken down to its smallest constituents. However, that will take a
very long time so no worries. Also, new layers with new galaxies are forming 'behind us', so even though we will perish, life will go on forming behind us in new basketball-skin zones in the 'formation' range.
Interestingly, gravitational fields do not have the same effect on waves (like electromagnetic waves aka light, radio waves, etc) as it does on particles like us humans. Humans and other particles/particle systems accelerate toward gravitational centers when inside a gravitational field and decelerate away from them (which is why its so hard to rocket to outerspace), but waves do the opposite - they accelerate toward outerspace from earth, and decelerate toward earth - basically, they behave oppositely in terms of speed/acceleration as particles do inside a gravitational field. Cool right? And by the way all of this isn't discovered yet, you're welcome
This effect of waves 'slowing down' when going through dense gravitational fields (the higher the density, the slower the speed) can be seen in the famous Shapiro effect/experiment, visualized below. It is currently used to elusively 'prove' or support relativity, but we know that is bullshit on this forum so get ready for the exciting truth
The experiment was as follows - a dude bounced radar beams off the surface of the planets of venus and mercury and measured the time it took for the beams to go from the earth to these planets and return. This was carried out over time as the earth moved around the sun causing new measurements be taken closer or further away from the sun (see the animated gif). As the radar beam shots passed closer to the sun, it took more time for the beams to return than when they were shot further from the sun. They then called it a day and said time was warping or some dumb stuff like that to support relativity and the status quo. But as you can clearly reason for yourself, the only thing different that happened is radar beams (waves, not particles) had to move through a denser region closer to the sun and a less dense region further from the sun, and this affected the time (the speed) it took for the beam to return. Therefore, higher density = slower wave speed, lesser density = faster wave speed.
Light (and all other waves), particles, and everything else in the universe has a speed determined partly by the medium (in this case, the suns gravitational field) it moves through. Radar beams are no exception. The coolest part is that waves slow down moving through gravitational field mediums, and particles speed up moving through the same gravitational medium. In theory though, if you shot a particle and a wave near the sun at somehow the same speed, it would take the same amount of time to reach its destination, because even though the wave slows down as it approaches the sun, it speeds up as it moves away from it, and even though the particle accelerates towards the sun (once outside of any other gravitational field like the earths), it decelerates as it moves away from the sun. So remember that when designing experiments, you future scientists