While sitting under an apple tree with Isaac Newton, an apple fell from the tree and inspired Newton to think about why apples and other objects always fall straight down, not sideways or up. This led him to develop his theory of universal gravitation, which states that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Newton showed that the same force that causes apples and other falling objects on Earth also governs the motion of celestial objects in space.