The regulation of gravitation, the fruit of an error or a boon? | EUROtoday

On Jul 5, 2025

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LA science by no means follows a protracted, quiet river. A scientific concept doesn’t immediately end result from the sensible instinct of a single man, however from an evolution, sluggish and progressive, from a number of concepts. The course of science can be strewn with fortuitous discoveries. Thus of the regulation of the primary bodily phenomenon with which the human being is confronted, gravity, whose legend attributes paternity to Isaac Newton (1643-1727): seated on the foot of a tree, he would have obtained by likelihood an apple on his head.

This unlucky incident would then have led him to assume: why did the apple fell on the bottom as a substitute of flying to the sky? Beginning of response with Aristotle?

Aristotle’s cosmology

Aristotle’s physics, Greek thinker of IV^e A century BC, is above all intuitive: heavy our bodies, like a stone, fall when the sunshine, for instance smoke, rise.

For Aristotle, the universe consists of two distinct areas subdivided into concentric spheres: one, the sublunary, extends from the middle of the earth to the sphere of the moon, when the second, the supranary, goes from the sphere of the moon to that of the fastened stars. This disciple of Plato (round 428-348 BC) opposes the sublunary, terrestrial and “corrupt” world, to the supranary area, an ideal and immutable celestial world with concentric spheres (inside which moon, solar, planets and stars) are revolving across the earth-Copernoi,

In the sublunary, terrestrial world, the thinker believes that the weather of the Empedocles (V^e century BC)-Earth, water, air, fire-initially existed in separate spheres: Earth within the heart, then water, air and eventually fireplace. Then these 4 spheres combined within the “corrupt” earthly world. Aristotle explains that every physique tends to occupy the pure place of its dominant ingredient. Thus, the stone, primarily of terrestrial essence, falls; The flames, massively comprising the hearth ingredient, rise. In addition, coexist the actions that Aristotle considers pure – the falling apple of the tree – and the violent actions, ensuing from an motion – when the apple is picked up by man. The thinker completes his gravitational concept by correlating the load of a physique with the pace of his fall: the extra heavy an object, the extra rapidly he’s on the bottom. “The glans falls faster than the oak leaf,” he stated, and it’s clear that the expertise didn’t show it mistaken. But…

Galileo versus Aristotle, some 2,000 years later

XVII^e century, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), higher recognized in our areas and particularly in our time beneath the identify of Galileo, calls into query the precept generally accepted for 2 thousand years ” In Naturo Veritas ” -” Nature source of truth ” – for the good thing about expertise, argumentation and logic. Among the pioneers of the scientific revolution which consists in based mostly expertise on verifiable and verified theories, he intends to place a posteriori In default Aristotle, specifically his concept in accordance with which a heavier physique falls quicker. The story describing him launching roughly large objects from the highest of the tower of Pisa to review their pace appears extremely inconceivable right now. Has he made him seen that the heavier balls have been truly falling quicker …

To break, subsequently, with Aristotelian concept, he engages in a thought expertise: postulating {that a} heavy physique falls quicker than a lightweight object, if we connect the 2 with a rope, the system constituted, even heavier, ought to drop quicker than the one heavy physique; Now, as a result of the small object falls slower than the massive one, stretching the rope, it slows down the autumn of the entire; If we observe the idea of Aristotle, the system is subsequently purported to fall each quicker and slower than the heavy object. A contradiction that Galileo explains by the next speculation: all objects fall on the similar pace within the void – expertise that it’s in fact unimaginable to conceive of the Renaissance.

One of his deep intuitions is that the resistance of the air intervenes within the fall of our bodies. After having said that the pace of the motion of an object is proportional to the house traveled, Galileo returns to its assertion-erroneous: it suspects {that a} physique falls in accordance with a uniformly accelerated motion, that’s to say with a pace growing in proportion to time.

To show it, the mathematician – additionally a physicist and astronomer – Italian analyzes the autumn of a ball on an inclined plan with bells, initially equidistant, tingling throughout his go to, then he listens to the sounds produced. As the ball slides, the frequency of those sounds will increase, corroborating the uniformly accelerated motion of the rolling object. What is extra, it demonstrates that the gap traveled (d) is proportional to the sq. of time
To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

Be that as it might, the gravitational regulation owes nothing to a cheerful – or sad, from the viewpoint of poor Isaac knocked out by the apple – Newtonian likelihood, however a succession of errors, temporally spaced two thousand years …

Find the entire of the summer season collection “Discoveries course”:
1. The regulation of gravitation, fruit of an error or a boon?
2. Stellar aberration, fruit of an error or a boon?
3. The so -called Röntgen X -rays, fruit of an error or a boon?
4. Uranic rays, fruit of an error or a boon?
5. The cosmological fixed, the fruit of an error or a boon?

https://www.lepoint.fr/science/la-loi-de-la-gravitation-fruit-d-une-erreur-ou-d-une-aubaine-05-07-2025-2593745_25.php