Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/80

64 there is no test-body to be affected, and in a rather vague way it is suspected to be some state of strain or other condition of an unperceived medium.

Although gravitation has been recognised for thousands of years, and its laws were formulated with sufficient accuracy for almost all purposes more than 200 years ago, it cannot be said that much progress has been made in explaining the nature or mechanism of this influence. It is said that more than 200 theories of gravitation have been put forward; but the most plausible of these have all had the defect that they lead nowhere and admit of no experimental test. Many of them would nowadays be dismissed as too materialistic for our taste—filling space with the hum of machinery—a procedure curiously popular in the nineteenth century. Few would survive the recent discovery that gravitation acts not only on the molecules of matter, but on the undulations of light.

The nature of gravitation has seemed very mysterious, yet it is a remarkable fact that in a limited region it is possible to create an artificial field of force which imitates a natural gravitational field so exactly that, so far as experiments have yet gone, no one can tell the difference. Those who seek for an explanation of gravitation naturally aim to find a model which will reproduce its effects; but no one before Einstein seems to have thought of finding the clue in these artificial fields, familiar as they are.

When a lift starts to move upwards the occupants feel a characteristic sensation, which is actually identical with a sensation of increased weight. The feeling disappears as soon as the motion becomes uniform; it is associated only with the change of motion of the lift, that is to say, the acceleration. Increased weight is not only a matter of sensation; it is shown by any physical experiments that can be performed. The usual laboratory determination of the value of gravity by Atwood's machine would, if carried out inside the accelerated lift, give a higher value. A spring-balance would record higher weights. Projectiles would follow the usual laws of motion but with a higher value of gravity. In fact, the upward acceleration of the lift is in its mechanical effects exactly similar to an additional gravitational field superimposed on that normally present.