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Gauss's law for gravity – Restatement of Newton's law of universal gravitation; Jordan and Einstein frames – different conventions for the metric tensor, in a theory of a dilaton coupled to gravity; Kepler orbit – Celestial orbit whose trajectory is a conic section in the orbital plane
The existence of the gravitational constant was explored by various researchers from the mid-17th century, helping Isaac Newton formulate his law of universal gravitation. Newton's classical mechanics were superseded in the early 20th century, when Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity.
Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. [ 221 ] [ 222 ] The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton , Newton's niece, to Voltaire . [ 223 ]
General relativity is a theory of gravity that advances beyond that of Newton. In general relativity, the gravitational force of Newtonian mechanics is reimagined as curvature of spacetime. A curved path like an orbit, attributed to a gravitational force in Newtonian mechanics, is not the result of a force deflecting a body from an ideal ...
1684 – Isaac Newton proves that planets moving under an inverse-square force law will obey Kepler's laws in a letter to Edmond Halley. [7] 1686 – Isaac Newton uses a fixed length pendulum with weights of varying composition to test the weak equivalence principle to 1 part in 1000. [9] [10]
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (English: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) [1] often referred to as simply the Principia (/ p r ɪ n ˈ s ɪ p i ə, p r ɪ n ˈ k ɪ p i ə /), is a book by Isaac Newton that expounds Newton's laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.
In that year, Einstein showed that a field theory of spacetime, general relativity, consistent with relativity can explain gravity. New effects resulting from this theory were dramatic for cosmology but minor for planetary motion and physics on Earth. Einstein himself noted Newton's "enormous practical success". [17]
Newton did acknowledge some prior work of others, including Ismaël Bullialdus, who suggested (but without demonstration) that there was an attractive force from the Sun in the inverse square proportion to the distance, and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, who suggested (again without demonstration) that there was a tendency towards the Sun like ...