You see this all the time in textbooks: This is often described as "the acceleration due to gravity". Is this really the best thing to call this? No. A better name would be "the local gravitational ...

Although we take a lot of scientific knowledge for granted today, each of the basics – whether it be about light, gravity, mass or the shape of the Earth – had to be theorized and experimentally ...

I had an interesting thought, spurred on by a discussion I ran across online about firing guns in space. Apparently, smokeless powder contains its own oxidizer and so you could shoot normal firearms ...

The triangle ain't equilateral. Also, I read the jar drawing as being constant speed, not constant acceleration. Each consecutive falling object is at a constant horizontal distance. At the small ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. What happens to light when it passes near a large mass? Does it simply ...

Albert Einstein opened humankind’s eyes to the universe. Before Einstein, space seemed featureless and changeless, as Isaac Newton had defined it two centuries earlier. And time, Newton declared, ...

One of the most astonishing facts about science is how universally applicable the laws of nature are. Every particle obeys the same rules, experiences the same forces, and sees the same fundamental ...

Wide binary stars with separation greater than about 2000 astronomical units are interesting natural laboratories that allow a direct probe of gravity at low acceleration weaker than about 1 nanometer ...

Wide binary stars with separation greater than about 2000 astronomical units are interesting natural laboratories that allow a direct probe of gravity at low acceleration weaker than about 1 nanometer ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, an immensely important update to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, is currently our best approximation ...