Chelmsford This is a difficult one, so I've split my answer into two sections. Read on for my explanation of our current understanding of the nature of gravity, or take a look at my virtual tour of Sir Isaac Newton's house to find out how the great man came to formulate his Universal Law of Gravity . Put as simply as possible, gravity is a force of attraction between objects due to their mass.
All masses attract each other no matter how big or small.
This is something that Sir Isaac Newton realised back in the 17th Century. To explain the attraction Newton devised his Universal Law of Gravity. This was revolutionary stuff, for the first time the orbits of the planets could be calculated using the same theory that explained the falling of an apple to earth. However, Newton's Universal Law of Gravity states how gravity works rather than what it is. This more tricky problem had to wait for another two hundred years for another genius, Einstein.