The following two
paragraphs are from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
Gravity is most accurately
described by the general theory of relativity(proposed by Albert
Einstein 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of space-time caused by the uneven distribution of mass/energy
…..for most applications,
gravity is well approximated by Newton's law of universal gravitation, which postulates that gravity causes a force where two bodies of mass are directly drawn (or
'attracted') to each other according to a mathematical relationship, where the
attractive force is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
I added the bold italics
in the above quote. It turns out when
you do some math with the equation the law can be stated by, it turns out that
if a sphere like the earth is one of the two bodies, the “force of gravity”
acts as if it were actually located at the center of the sphere.
Turns out that sometimes
we don’t know precisely what something is, but we know how to work with it in
applications.
