Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series)

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Perhaps one day we will learn that Newton’s gravity indeed requires adjustment. That’ll be okay. It has happened once before. Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity expanded on the principles of Newton’s gravity in a way that also applied to objects of extremely high mass. Newton’s law of gravity breaks down in this expanded realm, which was unknown to him. The lesson here is that our confidence flows through the range of conditions over which a law has been tested and verified. The broader that range, the more potent and powerful the law becomes in describing the cosmos. For ordinary household gravity, Newton’s law works just fine. It got us to the Moon and returned us safely to Earth in 1969. For black holes and the large-scale structure of the universe, we need general relativity. And if you insert low mass and low speeds into Einstein’s equations they literally (or, rather, mathematically) become Newton’s equations—all good reasons to develop confidence in our understanding of all we claim to understand.