28
votes
Who was the first to hypothesise that gravity from one mass causes the spacetime around another mass to curve?
The first metric theory of gravitation, in which the effects of gravitation are treated entirely in terms of the geometry of curved spacetime, was published by Finnish physicist Gunnar Nordström in ...
- 436
13
votes
Accepted
Did Newton predict the deflection of light by gravity?
Query 1 : Do not all bodies act upon light at a distance, and by their action bend its rays; and is not this action strongest at the least distance?
From The Queries, first published in 1704.
- 7,119
11
votes
Who first proposed the theory of tidal locking?
The concept of tidal locking appeared, at least qualititively, in proposition 38 of book III of Newton's principia. Newton wrote there:
Hence it is that the same face of the moon always respects the ...
- 4,639
10
votes
Accepted
What are the references for Riemann's discussion of gravity?
Riemann discussed a "unified field theory", including light, electromagnetism and gravity, in the unpublished paper Neue Mathematische Principien der Naturphilosophie (New Mathematical Principles of ...
- 78.3k
10
votes
Did the Idea of Universal Gravitation predate Newton?
The idea, yes, Aryabhata speculated about something like that as early as c. 500 AD, Brahmagupta called it gurutvākarṣaṇ. So did Kepler, at about the same time as Ahmad Baba al Massufi (late 1500-s), ...
- 78.3k
9
votes
Accepted
When did physicists begin using the symbol $G$ for Newton's gravitational constant?
The constant was introduced in Poynting's essay The Mean Density of the Earth that won the Adams prize at the University of Cambridge in 1893 on the subject "The Methods of determining the ...
- 78.3k
9
votes
Who first proposed the theory of tidal locking?
Here's an upper bound, so to speak, from a paper
This was first “predicted” by Immanuel Kant in 1754, when he proposed
that the gravitational force of the Moon would slow down Earth’s
rotation until ...
- 2,608
9
votes
Accepted
What sort of science is satirized in Hogarth's Weighing House?
Clubbe's Physiognomy, where the etching is the frontispiece, is accessible on Internet Archive. Clubbe's target was the so-called pneumatology ("science of spirit"), a popular in the 18th ...
- 78.3k
8
votes
How did Newton come up with his formula for gravitational force?
The formula was a commonly discussed hypothesis at that time (Ch. Wren, Hooke, Halley). First attempt to test the formula was made when Newton was a young student in Cambridge: he compared ...
- 50.2k
8
votes
Why didn't Einstein propose any metric solution to his equations?
The other answer by LolloBoldo is correct. But just to give some evidence, in the original 1915 paper Einstein explicitly states:
The field equations (16a) then take, as a first approximation, the ...
- 181
8
votes
Accepted
What were the details of Brahmagupta's theory of gravitation?
Brahmagupta's name came into prominence when the Rajasthan
education minister credited him in 2018 in a public speech with discovering the law of gravity before Newton. But the claim is greatly ...
- 78.3k
7
votes
Accepted
How was gravity explained in Ancient Greek and Roman times?
See Aristotle's Natural Philosophy.
According to Aristotle, change in the natural world can be :
[either] in accordance with the nature of the object — in which case the change is natural (phusei) or ...
- 15k
7
votes
Accepted
Who introduced gravitational potential?
The potential is not introduced in Hydrodynamica. Here is from The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics, p.366:
"Gravitational potential appeared implicitly in the form of the integral of ...
- 78.3k
7
votes
Did Newton predict the deflection of light by gravity?
Newton was a proponent of light as particles, so it seems natural that within his framework (classical mechanics) he would assume that light was affected by gravity.
This raises a pet peeve of mine, ...
- 171
6
votes
Accepted
Clairaut's proposed correction (reported as "D'Alembert's, Clairaut's and Euler's corrections") to the Newtonian inverse-square law of gravity
This answers (with some explanation and references) the two questions, (a) Were any concrete corrections proposed (in the 1740s, to the law of gravitation)? and (b) Where can one read about it?
(a) ...
- 4,700
6
votes
Did the Idea of Universal Gravitation predate Newton?
'Did the Idea of Universal Gravitation predate Newton?'
(The question went on to mention the books of Ahmed Baba.)
I had a look to see whether Baba's work is available in any way online, but found ...
- 4,700
5
votes
Accepted
How did Newton come up with mass terms in his gravitation formula and then what led to a confusion between inertial and gravitational mass?
The terminology of inertial and gravitational masses does not appear until Einstein, and had to do with his transitioning from classical mechanics to general relativity, see Development of ...
- 78.3k
5
votes
Who wrote down the equations governing gravity in a field language for the first time?
Lagrange (1736-1813) in 1777, followed by Laplace (1749-1827) in 1782, was the first to introduce the scalar gravitational potential.1
Lagrange's paper, Remarques générales sur lemouvement de ...
- 5,431
5
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein know about Laplace's query into whether gravity is instantaneous?
Laplace in 1799 introduced velocity dependence in a particular way, modifying the inverse square law so that the force was directed towards the position retarded according to the relative velocity $v$ ...
- 78.3k
5
votes
What pre-GR alternatives to Vulcan were advanced to explain Mercury's perihelion precession?
The idea of a hypothetical planet 'Vulcan' with an orbit closer to the Sun than Mercury's orbit has been given excessive prominence in secondary and popular accounts. These accounts tend to produce a ...
- 4,700
5
votes
Accepted
Did Newton's leap to understanding gravity involve cannonball thought experiments on a smooth Earth?
It is because it was moved to another book A Treatise of the System of the World (also by Isaac Newton).
From Wikipedia's Newton's cannonball:
Newton's original plan for Philosophiæ Naturalis ...
- 3,997
5
votes
Accepted
What is the relationship between the Newtonian laws of motion and gravity and the Keplerian laws of planetary motion?
Newton's law of gravity is equivalent to Kepler's laws in the following sense: for two bodies, assuming attraction by a central force if the force obeys Newton's law then the motion obeys Kepler's ...
- 50.2k
4
votes
How did Newton come up with his formula for gravitational force?
As Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. One of those giants was Kepler who found that the periodicity of a planetary orbit was related by
$$
T^2~\propto~r^3.
$$
This is Kepler's third law. ...
4
votes
Accepted
Was Newton aware his theory of gravity had flaws?
See Perihelion precession of Mercury:
Mercury deviates from the precession predicted from these Newtonian effects. This anomalous rate of precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit was first ...
- 15k
4
votes
Was Aristotle really wrong about gravity?
Physicists now tend to think in terms of effective theories; that is a theory which is accurate in a certain energy regime but fails in another. Thus, for example we get super-gravity as a low energy ...
- 3,788
4
votes
How was gravity explained in Ancient Greek and Roman times?
The aristotelian theory affirmed that there was a natural 'affinity' between substances that were alike. Thus, a stone fell towards the ground because of a natural, telluric affinity, and fire/smoke ...
- 704
4
votes
Advance of the perihelion of Mercury
In this page K. Brown writes:
The failure to arrive at a realistic Newtonian explanation for the
anomalous precession led some researchers, notably Asaph Hall and
Simon Newcomb, to consider ...
- 421
4
votes
Advance of the perihelion of Mercury
The idea that the exponent in the law of gravitation is not exactly 2 was around since 18th century when people were trying to work the precise theory of the Moon. At some point, Clairaut thought that ...
- 50.2k
4
votes
What was the historical motivation for introducing the concept 'gravitational potential'?
The theory of potentials has over a century of history from conception to present status, so the following is a brief resume, and may contains errors due to the summation (besides the errors due to my ...
- 888
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