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It is hypothesized that gravitational interactions are mediated by an as yet undiscovered elementary particle, dubbed the graviton.The three other known forces of nature are mediated by elementary particles: electromagnetism by the photon, the strong interaction by gluons, and the weak interaction by the W and Z bosons.
where F is the gravitational force acting between two objects, m 1 and m 2 are the masses of the objects, r is the distance between the centers of their masses, and G is the gravitational constant. The first test of Newton's law of gravitation between masses in the laboratory was the Cavendish experiment conducted by the British scientist Henry ...
In classical mechanics, a gravitational field is a physical quantity. [5] A gravitational field can be defined using Newton's law of universal gravitation. Determined in this way, the gravitational field g around a single particle of mass M is a vector field consisting at every point of a vector pointing directly towards the particle. The ...
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is the work that an outside agent must do in order to quasi-statically bring the masses together (which is therefore, exactly opposite the work done by the gravitational field on the masses): = = where is the displacement vector of the mass, is gravitational force acting on it and denotes scalar product.
Gravitation, also known as gravitational attraction, is the mutual attraction between all masses in the universe.Gravity is the gravitational attraction at the surface of a planet or other celestial body; [6] gravity may also include, in addition to gravitation, the centrifugal force resulting from the planet's rotation (see § Earth's gravity).
In special relativity, the rest mass of a particle can be defined unambiguously in terms of its energy and momentum (see Mass in special relativity). Generalizing the notion of the energy and momentum to general relativity, however, is subtle. The main reason for this is that that gravitational field itself contributes to the energy and momentum.
Active gravitational mass [note 4] is a measure of the strength of an object's gravitational flux (gravitational flux is equal to the surface integral of gravitational field over an enclosing surface). Gravitational field can be measured by allowing a small "test object" to fall freely and measuring its free-fall acceleration.
In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. [6] A gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, such as the gravitational force field exerted on another massive body.