Who discovered gravity?
GRAVITY is the universal force that pulls all objects towards each other, and keeps us standing on the ground.
Today, we take gravity for granted - but who first discovered this invisible force?
Who discovered gravity?
English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton was the first to explain gravity in a way that applied to all objects, as we know it today.
But Newton's explanation was not the whole story - and actually drew together many ideas that scientists and philosophers had been musing over for centuries before him.
In the 300s BC, Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle talked of objects having an inner weight, heaviness, or "gravitas".
And in the 7th century, Indian astronomer Brahmagupta first spoke of gravity as an attractive force.
It was not until 1589 that experiments began to be conducted to test the idea of gravity.
Italian scientist Galileo Galilei noticed that balls of different mass dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Italy, all hit the Earth at the same time.
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Next, building on all these thoughts and experiments, Newton came up with a complete explanation of gravity, and published his Law of Gravity in 1687.
The most important part of Newton's Law of Gravity at the time was his explanation of objects of greater mass having a stronger pull than objects of lesser mass.
This described how objects were able to be in orbit rather than spinning off into space.
Newton’s work still provides the core of our understanding of gravity to this day.
We calculate space rocket launches by it - but it actually didn’t describe the action of gravity with total accuracy, or with reference to all things.
Albert Einstein made the next crucial step in understanding gravity, in 1915.
His Theory of Relativity described how objects form a kind of well of time and space around them that other objects, including light, fall into.
This replaced Newton’s notion of objects exerting a force on each other - but it still isn’t the whole story, and we don’t have that yet.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity holds right up to the edges of blackholes, but deep inside them the Universe folds in on itself and the theory breaks down.
When did Isaac Newton discover gravity?
Newton published his explanation of gravity in 1687, at the age of 44.
Almost everyone knows the famous story about how the idea came to him as he was sitting under an apple tree, and an apple fell on his head.
This story is a myth - but he did get to his understanding of gravity by watching an apple fall and thinking of cannon balls.
He wondered about how objects are always pulled towards the Earth, and reasoned that a cannon ball fired upwards moves in a curve.
Newton thought that if said cannon ball was travelling fast enough, it would be pulled into following the curve of the Earth.
Now known as Sir Isaac Newton, he was the first scientist to be knighted for his work.
He also published his first three laws of motion, his work on calculus, and the relationship between light and colours.
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Newton was made President of the Royal Society, and later in his life was elected to Parliament, representing Cambridge University.
As Master of the Royal Mint, he was credited with saving England's currency. Newton died in 1727, aged 84.