Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Bentley's paradox (named after Richard Bentley) is a cosmological paradox pointing to a problem occurring when Newton's theory of gravitation is applied to cosmology. Namely, if all the stars are drawn to each other by gravitation, they should collapse into a single point.
The publication of the law has become known as the "first great unification", as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on Earth with known astronomical behaviors. [1] [2] [3] This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called inductive reasoning. [4]
In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas 'weight' [1]) is a fundamental interaction primarily observed as mutual attraction between all things that have mass.Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 10 38 times weaker than the strong interaction, 10 36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 10 29 times weaker than the weak interaction.
Coulomb's law and Newton's law of universal gravitation are based on action at a distance. Historically, action at a distance was the earliest scientific model for gravity and electricity and it continues to be useful in many practical cases. In the 19th and 20th centuries, field models arose to explain these phenomena with more precision.
According to Newton's law of gravity, and independently verified by experiments such as that of Eötvös and its successors (see Eötvös experiment), there is a universality of free fall (also known as the weak equivalence principle, or the universal equality of inertial and passive-gravitational mass): the trajectory of a test body in free ...
In string theory, believed by some to be a consistent theory of quantum gravity, the graviton is a massless state of a fundamental string. If it exists, the graviton is expected to be massless because the gravitational force has a very long range, and appears to propagate at the speed of light.
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.
At this time, Newton developed his theory of gravitation which is based on attraction, and although Huygens agreed with the mathematical formalism, he said the model was insufficient due to the lack of a mechanical explanation of the force law. Newton's discovery that gravity obeys the inverse square law surprised Huygens and he tried to take ...