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Gravity field surrounding Earth from a macroscopic perspective. Newton's law of universal gravitation can be written as a vector equation to account for the direction of the gravitational force as well as its magnitude. In this formula, quantities in bold represent vectors.
General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever present matter and radiation.
Only Einstein's theory proved to be consistent with experiments and observations. To understand the theory's basic ideas, it is instructive to follow Einstein's thinking between 1907 and 1915, from his simple thought experiment involving an observer in free fall to his fully geometric theory of gravity. [1]
The gravitational constant G is a key quantity in Newton's law of universal gravitation. The gravitational constant is an empirical physical constant involved in the calculation of gravitational effects in Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation and in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.
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 Newton's classical mechanics were superseded in the early 20th century, when Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity.
General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the years 1907–1915. The development of general relativity began with the equivalence principle , under which the states of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational field (for example, when standing on the surface of the Earth) are physically identical.
Derivation of Newton's law of gravity Newtonian gravitation can be written as the theory of a scalar field, Φ , which is the gravitational potential in joules per kilogram of the gravitational field g = −∇Φ , see Gauss's law for gravity ∇ 2 Φ ( x → , t ) = 4 π G ρ ( x → , t ) {\displaystyle \nabla ^{2}\Phi \left({\vec {x}},t ...
A further hurdle was the acceptance that in a theory of everything, quantum mechanics had to be incorporated from the outset, rather than emerging as a consequence of a deterministic unified theory, as Einstein had hoped. Gravity and electromagnetism are able to coexist as entries in a list of classical forces, but for many years it seemed that ...