DOC. 17 GRAVITY AND MATTER
81
DO
GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS PLAY
AN ESSENTIAL
PART
IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE ELEMEN-
TARY PARTICLES OF MATTER?
By
A.
EINSTEIN
NEITHERthe
the Newtonian
nor
the relativistic
theory
of gravitation
has
so
far
led to
any
advance in
the
theory
of
constitution
of matter.
In
view of this
fact it
will be shown in the
following pages
that
there
are
reasons
for
thinking
that the
elementary
formations which
go
to
make
up
the
atom
are
held
together
by
gravitational
forces.
[1]
[2]
§
I.
Defects
of
the
Present View
Great
pains
have been
taken
to elaborate
a
theory
which
will
account for
the
equilibrium
of
the
electricity
constituting
the
electron.
G.
Mie,
in
particular,
has
devoted
deep
re-
[3]
searches to
this
question.
His
theory,
which has
found
con-
siderable
support among
theoretical
physicists,
is based
mainly
on
the introduction into
the
energy-tensor
of
sup-
plementary
terms
depending
on
the
components of
the
electro-dynamic potential,
in addition
to
the
energy
terms
of
the
Maxwell-Lorentz
theory.
These
new
terms,
which
in
outside
space
are
unimportant,
are
nevertheless
effective
in
the
interior
of
the electrons
in
maintaining equilibrium
against
the
electric forces
of
repulsion.
In
spite
of
the
beauty
of
the formal
structure
of
this
theory,
as
erected
by
Mie,
Hilbert,
and
Weyl,
its
physical
results have hitherto
[4] [5]
been
unsatisfactory.
On
the
one
hand the
multiplicity of
possibilities
is
discouraging,
and
on
the other hand those
additional terms have
not
as yet
allowed themselves to be
framed
in
such
a
simple
form
that the solution
could be
satisfactory.
191
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