One probably didn’t really fall on the head of Sir Isaac Newton in 1665, knocking loose enlightenment about the nature of falling bodies. And while you’re at it, forget what you learned about gravity in school. That’s not how it really works. But don’t take our word for it. Let the main contenders in the history of gravitational theory duke it out themselves.
newton
Newton could describe gravity, but he didn't know how it worked.
Round 1: Newton
“Gravity really does exist,” Newton stated in 1687. “[It] acts according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies.” Before Newton, no one had heard of gravity, let alone the concept of a universal law.
Cambridge University, where Newton studied, was closed due to plague in 1665. Finding respite at his childhood home, the 23-year-old plunged into months of feverish mathematical brainstorming. This, plus a dubious apple descent in the back orchard, laid the foundation for his masterwork Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In Principia, Newton described gravity as an ever-present force, a tug that all objects exert on nearby objects. The more mass an object has, the stronger its tug. Increasing the distance between two objects weakens the attraction.
Principia’s mathematical explanations of these relationships were simple and extremely handy. With his equations, Newton was able to explain for the first time why the Moon stays in orbit around Earth. To this day, we use Newton’s math to predict the trajectory of a softball toss or of astronauts landing on the Moon. In fact, all everyday observations of gravity on Earth and in the heavens can be explained quite precisely with Newton’s theory.
Okay, we buy it. But how does it work?
Hello?
Silence from Newton’s corner of the ring.
The truth is, Newton could describe gravity, but he didn’t know how it worked. “Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws,” he admitted. “But whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.”
For 300 years, nobody truly considered what that agent might be. Maybe any possible contenders were intimidated by Newton’s genius. The man invented calculus, for Pete’s sake.
Ding. Round 2: Einstein
Apparently Albert Einstein wasn’t intimidated. He even apologized. “Newton, forgive me,” he wrote in his memoirs. “You found the only way which, in your age, was just about possible for a man of highest thought and creative power.”
In 1915, after eight years of sorting his thoughts, Einstein had dreamed up (literally--he had no experimental precursors) an agent that caused gravity. And it wasn’t simply a force. According to his theory of General Relativity, gravity is much weirder: a natural consequence of a mass’s influence on space.
Einstein agreed with Newton that space had dimension: width, length, and height. Space might be filled with matter, or it might not. But Newton didn’t believe that space was affected by the objects in it. Einstein did. He theorized that a mass can prod space plenty. It can warp it, bend it, push it, or pull it. Gravity was just a natural outcome of a mass’s existence in space.*
gravitytug
According to Einstein, an object's gravity is a curvature of space.
You can visualize Einstein’s gravity warp by stepping on a trampoline. Your mass causes a depression in the stretchy fabric of space. Roll a ball past the warp at your feet and it’ll curve toward your mass. The heavier you are, the more you bend space. Look at the edges of the trampoline--the warp lessens farther away from your mass. Thus, the same Newtonian relationships are explained (and predicted mathematically with better precision), yet through a different lens of warped space. Take that, Newton, says Einstein. With regrets.
