History / Physics / Relativity

The Men Who Weighed Mountains

 In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his magnum opus describing the laws of motion and the secrets of the universe. One such secret is Newton’s law of universal gravitation, which states that the same gravitational force that pulls us down to the Earth holds the planets in their orbits around the sun. Indeed, every mass attracts every other mass through gravity. This means that not only are we pulled downwards towards the Earth, but we are pulled towards pieces of the Earth. We are all gravitationally attracted to mountains. In fact, this is an excellent test of Newton’s