::::The essay specifically says "Newtonian gravity", not "the law of gravity" (whatever that might be). In Newtonian gravity the force absolutely has to be inverse square; as was pointed out above it's a direct and simple consequence of the fact that the area of a sphere is proportional to radius squared. The same applies for other classical field theories, such as classical electromagnetism (eg, the Coulomb attraction between two point charges is inverse square). But "Newtonian gravity" is not the same thing as "the way gravity really works" - we have General Relativity after all, and doubtlessly other successful theories of gravity will be developed in future. [[User:BrianW|BrianW]] 07:13, 15 February 2009 (EST) | ::::The essay specifically says "Newtonian gravity", not "the law of gravity" (whatever that might be). In Newtonian gravity the force absolutely has to be inverse square; as was pointed out above it's a direct and simple consequence of the fact that the area of a sphere is proportional to radius squared. The same applies for other classical field theories, such as classical electromagnetism (eg, the Coulomb attraction between two point charges is inverse square). But "Newtonian gravity" is not the same thing as "the way gravity really works" - we have General Relativity after all, and doubtlessly other successful theories of gravity will be developed in future. [[User:BrianW|BrianW]] 07:13, 15 February 2009 (EST) |