Considerations on Gravitation

Abstract

{\S}1. After all we have learned in the last twenty or thirty years about the mechanism of electric and magnetic phenomena, it is natural to examine in how far it is possible to account for the force of gravitation by ascribing it to a certain state of the aether. A theory of universal attraction, founded on such an assumption, would take the simplest form if new hypotheses about the aether could be avoided, i. e. if the two states which exist in an electric and a magnetic field, and whose mutual connection is expressed by the well known electromagnetic equations were found sufficient for the purpose. If further it be taken for granted that only electrically charged particles or ions, are directly acted on by the aether, one is led to the idea that every particle of ponderable matter might consist of two ions with equal opposite charges---or at least might contain two such ions---and that gravitation might be the result of the forces experienced by these ions. Now that so many phenomena have been explained by a theory of ions, this idea seems to be more admissible than it was ever before.