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1876 – William Kingdon Clifford suggests that the motion of matter may be due to changes in the geometry of space. [24] 1882 – Simon Newcomb observes a 43 arcsecond per century excess precession of Mercury's orbit. 1884 – William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) lectures on the issues with the wave theory of light with regards to the luminiferous ...
To make this into an equal-sided formula or equation, there needed to be a multiplying factor or constant that would give the correct force of gravity no matter the value of the masses or distance between them – the gravitational constant. Newton would need an accurate measure of this constant to prove his inverse-square law.
General relativity is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. According to general relativity, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of space and time by those masses.
This timeline lists significant discoveries in physics and the laws of nature, including experimental discoveries, theoretical proposals that were confirmed experimentally, and theories that have significantly influenced current thinking in modern physics. Such discoveries are often a multi-step, multi-person process.
In this theory, the field equation is the Poisson equation =, where is the gravitational potential and is the density of matter, augmented by an equation of motion for a test particle in an ambient gravitational field, which we can derive from Newton's force law and which states that the acceleration of the test particle is given by the ...
The accepted theory of heat in the 18th century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called caloric; although this theory was later shown to be erroneous, a number of scientists adhering to it nevertheless made important discoveries useful in developing the modern theory, including Joseph Black (1728–1799) and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed ...
Matter continues to draw together under the influence of gravity, to form galaxies. The stars from this time period, known as Population II stars, are formed early on in this process, with more recent Population I stars formed later. Gravitational attraction also gradually pulls galaxies towards each other to form groups, clusters and ...
Significant advancements in methods of investigation were introduced for celestial mechanics, which includes realizing a universal gravitational force, with the introduction of the telescope. Basing mechanics on experimental results was possible with the development of devices that could measure time, and tools for measuring distance.