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This mathematical expression of the force did not imply a cause. Newton considered action-at-a-distance to be an inadequate model for gravity. [6] Newton, in his words, considered action at a distance to be: so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. [7]
The first two conflicts with observations above were explained by Einstein's theory of general relativity, in which gravitation is a manifestation of curved spacetime instead of being due to a force propagated between bodies. In Einstein's theory, energy and momentum distort spacetime in their vicinity, and other particles move in trajectories ...
Energy can broadly be classified into kinetic, due to a body's motion, and potential, due to a body's position relative to others. Thermal energy , the energy carried by heat flow, is a type of kinetic energy not associated with the macroscopic motion of objects but instead with the movements of the atoms and molecules of which they are made.
In the simple case of a single particle moving with a constant velocity (thereby undergoing uniform linear motion), the action is the momentum of the particle times the distance it moves, added up along its path; equivalently, action is the difference between the particle's kinetic energy and its potential energy, times the duration for which ...
A theory that includes the principle of locality is said to be a "local theory". This is an alternative to the concept of instantaneous, or "non-local" action at a distance. Locality evolved out of the field theories of classical physics.
The energy function in the action principles is not the total energy (conserved in an isolated system), but the Lagrangian, the difference between kinetic and potential energy. The kinetic energy combines the energy of motion for all the objects in the system; the potential energy depends upon the instantaneous position of the objects and ...
The two-body problem in general relativity (or relativistic two-body problem) is the determination of the motion and gravitational field of two bodies as described by the field equations of general relativity. Solving the Kepler problem is essential to calculate the bending of light by gravity and the motion of a planet orbiting its sun
The orbits of these binary pulsars are decaying due to loss of energy in the form of gravitational radiation. The rate of this energy loss ("gravitational damping") can be measured, and since it depends on the speed of gravity, comparing the measured values to theory shows that the speed of gravity is equal to the speed of light to within 1%. [22]