10/04/2025, 11:58 Gravity | Definition, Physics, & Facts | Britannica

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gravity
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Also known as: g-force, gravitation
Written by Kenneth L. Nordtvedt , James E. Faller • All
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Last Updated: Mar 17, 2025 • Article History

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gravity, in mechanics, the universal force

gravitational lens A galactic cluster, about
of attraction acting between all bodies of five billion light-years away, produces a
tremendous gravitational field that “bends”…
...(more)
matter. It is by far the weakest known force
in nature and thus plays no role in
determining the internal properties of
Also called: gravitation
everyday matter. On the other hand,
Key People: Kip Thorne • Isaac
through its long reach and universal action, Newton • Galileo • John Archibald
it controls the trajectories of bodies in the Wheeler • Simon Stevin

solar system and elsewhere in the universe Related Topics: Lagrange point •
supergravity • weight • Schwarzschild
and the structures and evolution of stars, radius • gravity anomaly
galaxies, and the whole cosmos. On Earth
See all related content
all bodies have a weight, or downward force
of gravity, proportional to their mass,
which Earth’s mass exerts on them. Gravity is measured by the acceleration that it
gives to freely falling objects. At Earth’s surface the acceleration of gravity is about
9.8 meters (32 feet) per second per second. Thus, for every second an object is in
free fall, its speed increases by about 9.8 meters per second. At the surface of the
Moon the acceleration of a freely falling body is about 1.6 meters per second per
second.

The works of Isaac Newton and Albert

Einstein dominate the development of
gravitational theory. Newton’s classical
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theory of gravitational force held sway from
his Principia, published in 1687, until

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10/04/2025, 11:58 Gravity | Definition, Physics, & Facts | Britannica

Kepler described the planetary orbits with simple geometric and arithmetic
relations. Kepler’s three quantitative laws of planetary motion are:

Britannica Quiz

All About Astronomy

1. The planets describe elliptic orbits, of which the Sun occupies one focus (a
focus is one of two points inside an ellipse; any ray coming from one of them
bounces off a side of the ellipse and goes through the other focus).

2. The line joining a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.

3. The square of the period of revolution of a planet is proportional to the cube of

its average distance from the Sun.

During this same period the Italian astronomer and natural philosopher Galileo
Galilei made progress in understanding “natural” motion and simple accelerated
motion for earthly objects. He realized that bodies that are uninfluenced by forces
continue indefinitely to move and that force is necessary to change motion, not to
maintain constant motion. In studying how objects fall toward Earth, Galileo
discovered that the motion is one of constant acceleration. He demonstrated that
the distance a falling body travels from rest in this way varies as the square of the
time. As noted above, the acceleration due to gravity at the surface of Earth is
about 9.8 meters per second per second. Galileo was also the first to show by
experiment that bodies fall with the same acceleration whatever their composition
(the weak principle of equivalence).

Newton’s law of gravity

Newton discovered the relationship

between the motion of the Moon and the
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motion of a body falling freely on Earth. By
his dynamical and gravitational theories, he
explained Kepler’s laws and established the
modern quantitative science of gravitation.
Newton assumed the existence of an
attractive force between all massive bodies,

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common interaction, a gravitational force between bodies that diminishes as the

inverse square of the distance between them. Thus, if the distance between the
bodies is doubled, the force on them is reduced to a fourth of the original.

Newton saw that the gravitational force between bodies must depend on the
masses of the bodies. Since a body of mass M experiencing a force F accelerates at
a rate F/M, a force of gravity proportional to M would be consistent with Galileo’s
observation that all bodies accelerate under gravity toward Earth at the same rate,
a fact that Newton also tested experimentally. In Newton’s equation

F12 is the magnitude of the gravitational force acting between masses M1 and M2
separated by distance r12. The force equals the product of these masses and of G, a
universal constant, divided by the square of the distance.

The constant G is a quantity with the physical dimensions (length)3/(mass)

(time)2; its numerical value depends on the physical units of length, mass, and
time used. (G is discussed more fully in subsequent sections.)

The force acts in the direction of the line joining the two bodies and so is
represented naturally as a vector, F. If r is the vector separation of the bodies, then

In this expression the factor r/r3 acts in the direction of r and is numerically equal
to 1/r2.

The attractive force of a number of bodies of masses M1 on a body of mass M is

where Σ1 means that the forces because of all the attracting bodies must be added
together vectorially. This is Newton’s gravitational law essentially in its original
form. A simpler expression, equation (5), gives the surface acceleration on Earth.
Setting a mass equal to Earth’s mass ME and the distance equal to Earth’s radius
rE, the downward acceleration of a body at the surface g is equal to the product of
the universal gravitational constant and the mass of Earth divided by the square of
the radius:

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which numerically comes close to the accepted value of 6.6743 × 10−11 m3 s−2 kg−1,
first directly measured by Henry Cavendish.

Comparing equation (5) for Earth’s surface acceleration g with the R3/T2 ratio for
the planets, a formula for the ratio of the Sun’s mass MS to Earth’s mass ME was
obtained in terms of known quantities, RE being the radius of Earth’s orbit:

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The motions of the moons of Jupiter (discovered by Galileo) around Jupiter obey
Kepler’s laws just as the planets do around the Sun. Thus, Newton calculated that
Jupiter, with a radius 11 times larger than Earth’s, was 318 times more massive
than Earth but only 1/ as dense.
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