Isaac Newton made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of gravity. His most famous discovery is the law of universal gravitation, which he formulated in the late 17th century. The law states that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. This can be expressed with the formula: F=Gm1m2r2F = G \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}
Where:
- FF is the gravitational force between two objects,
- GG is the gravitational constant,
- m1m_1 and m2m_2 are the masses of the two objects,
- rr is the distance between the centers of the two objects.
Newton’s theory revolutionized how we think about gravity, showing that it is a universal force that acts between all objects with mass, no matter how far apart they are, and that this force governs the motion of planets, moons, and even light.
This theory also helped explain why planets orbit the Sun, why objects fall to the ground, and why the Moon orbits the Earth, unifying many previously separate phenomena into one theory of motion and force. His work was published in his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), often referred to simply as the Principia.