Newtonian Gravity Helping Scientists Make Space Exploration Advances
Newsy
Gravity is assisting the James Webb Space Telescope, which reached its final destination1 million miles away last month.
Today's story is being told because of a boring night on Twitter when I came upon this. It's graceful. It's beautiful. It's physics. Three random planets each with a different mass are placed on the screen. Gravity does the rest.
It's just Newtonian gravity — the same thing Isaac Newton figured out a couple hundred years ago. Ostensibly, by getting hit in the head with an apple.
Though Einstein made huge advances in the 20th century, nearly everything you need to know about what these planets are doing comes from Newton. In 1679, he figured out it was gravity that kept the planets in their orbits.
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