Join us for Skyscrapers’ September Monthly Meeting at
Seagrave Memorial Observatory
47 Peeptoad Road
North Scituate, RI 02857
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Featuring Dr. Savvas Koushiappas, Brown University
Social hour at 6:30pm, Presentation at 7:00pm
One Law for the Apple and the Moon
Two thousand years of separate heavens and Earth were undone by a single number. In this talk I will tell the story of universal gravitation, the audacious idea that united sky and ground — a single calculation that proved the fall of an apple and the orbit of the Moon are the same thing at different distances. I will discuss how one small equation went on to predict a comet’s return, discover Neptune with a pencil, weigh the Sun, and guide telescopes and spacecraft today. The effects of this universal law are visible every time you are at the eyepiece, with double stars, planets, comets, star clusters, galaxies and hidden mass — all running on one simple idea.
Savvas Koushiappas is a professor of physics at Brown University, where he studies astroparticle physics and cosmology. He has been an amateur astronomer for forty years, and he enjoys stepping back from the research frontier to share the stories behind the science and, when given the chance, to point a telescope at the objects those stories are about.
