The Universal Law of Gravitation

The universal law of gravitation was discovered by Newton in the seventeenth century. Before Newton’s discovery, no one knew of the existence of such law.

The year was 1665; the month was August. Newton, then a 23 year old Cambridge University student retired to the solitude of his family’s farm. The university was closed for two years because of the Greta Plaque.

There is a story that Isaac Newton was inspired by the fall of an apple, to consider whether gravity was responsible for the motion of the moon as well. He was wondering what force could hold the moon in its path when the fall of an apple made him think that it might be the same of gravitational force.

With the idea of gravity fixed in his mind, Newton began the task of determining the mathematics involved in universal gravitation.

Newton himself never wrote about that day in the orchard, but he did reminisce about it to friends some 50 years later.

Newton’s realization that gravity is universal had important implications. Newton recognized that the laws of motion must also be universal in character.

Newton’s law of gravitation was the first theory to accurately describe the motion of objects on Earth as well as the planetary motion that astronomers had long observed. 

According to Newton’s universal law of gravitation ‘every particle in the universe attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of those particles and inversely proportional the square do the distance between those particles.

Newton’s law led to many new discoveries, the most important of which was the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1864.
The Universal Law of Gravitation