Gravitation and Temperature

Abstract

As the outcome of a very delicate systematic series of experiments (Phil. Trans., 1916) it is announced by Dr. P. E. Shaw that “when one large mass attracts a small one the gravitative force between them increases by about 1/500 as temperature of the large mass rises from, say, 15° C. to 215° C.”; that is, it increases by about 1.2×10^-5 of itself per degree Centigrade. This seems to be a very startling result, at any rate if temperature is merely the expression of internal molecular motions, as, indeed, Dr. Shaw seems to admit.