Newton's law of universal gravitation

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Newton's law of universal gravitation describes gravity as a force: any particle attracts any other particle with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers of mass. Separated, spherically symmetrical objects attract and are attracted as if all their mass were concentrated at their centers. The publication of the law has become known as the "first great unification", as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on Earth with known astronomical behaviors. This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called inductive reasoning. It is a part of classical mechanics and was formulated in Newton's work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy' (the Principia)), first published on 5 July 1687. The equation for universal gravitation thus takes the form:...

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