A. C. Clarke's Space Odyssey and Newton's law of gravity
In his famous tetralogy, Space Odyssey, A. C. Clarke called the calculation of a motion of a mass point in the gravitational field of the massive cuboid a classical problem of gravitational mechanics. This article presents a proposal for a solution to this problem in terms of Newton's theory of gravity. First we discuss and generalize Newton's law of gravitation. We then compare the gravitational field created by the cuboid -- monolith, with the gravitational field of the homogeneous sphere. This...