The main criticism Newton received for his work on gravitation was that people did not think forces could act at such large distances. Newton's laws of gravitation described gravity as a force that acted between massive objects, such as the Earth and the Sun, regardless of the distance between them. This idea was radical at the time and challenged the prevailing view that forces could only act at short distances, such as the force of a hammer hitting a nail. Newton's laws of gravitation were widely accepted and remain one of the cornerstone concepts in physics, but the idea of long-range forces was initially met with skepticism and resistance