AS EVERY schoolchild knows, the concept of gravity came to Isaac Newton after a close encounter with an apple - or so the story goes. Older students go on to learn Einstein's view of gravity: that masses warp space-time like a ball on a rubber sheet. Now we could be closing in on an explanation of where gravity comes from: it might be an emergent property of the way objects are organised, much as fluidity arises as a property of water (see "Gravity's origin falling into place"). This idea might seem exotic now, but to kids of the future it might be as familiar as apples.
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.