Gravity and dark matter, a bond beyond distances

Isaac Newton formulated his theory of gravity as an action at a distance: a planet instantly feels the influence of another celestial body, no matter the distance between them. This characteristic motivated Albert Einstein to develop the famous theory of general relativity, where gravity becomes a local deformation of spacetime. The principle of locality states that an object is directly influenced only by its surrounding environment: Distant objects cannot communicate instantaneously; only what is here right now matters.