Newton's law of universal gravitation states that any two bodies in the universe

attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. [note 1] This is a
general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac
Newton calledinduction.[2] It is a part of classical mechanics and was formulated in
Newton's work Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("the Principia"), first
published on 5 July 1687. (When Newton's book was presented in 1686 to theRoyal
Society, Robert Hooke made a claim that Newton had obtained the inverse square law
from him; see the Historysection below.)
In modern language, the law states: Every point mass attracts every single other point
mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force
is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportionalto the square of
the distance between them.[3] The first test of Newton's theory of gravitation between
masses in the laboratory was the Cavendish experiment conducted by
the British scientist Henry Cavendish in 1798.[4] It took place 111 years after the
publication of Newton's Principia and 71 years after his death.
Newton's law of gravitation resembles Coulomb's law of electrical forces, which is used to
calculate the magnitude of electrical force between two charged bodies. Both are inversesquare laws, in which force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between
the bodies. Coulomb's law has the product of two charges in place of the product of the
masses, and the electrostatic constant in place of the gravitational constant.
Newton's law has since been superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity, but it
continues to be used as an excellent approximation of the effects of gravity. Relativity is
required only when there is a need for extreme precision, or when dealing with very strong
gravitational fields, such as those found near extremely massive and dense objects, or at
very close distances (such as Mercury's orbit around the sun).