The Weight of the Sun

In 1687, Isaac Newton published his law of universal gravitation, and astronomers began calculating the forces that govern our solar system. What they discovered is staggering. The sun contains 99. 86 percent of all the mass in our entire solar system. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, every moon, asteroid, and comet combined account for a mere sliver of what remains. When scientists calculate Earth's orbit, they can effectively ignore the gravitational pull of every other body in the solar system.…