The earth
produces in its surrounding a gravitational field, which acts on the
stone and produces its motion of fall. As we know from experience, the
intensity of the action on a body dimishes according to a quite
definite law, as we proceed farther and farther away from the earth.
From our point of view this means : The law governing the properties
of the gravitational field in space must be a perfectly definite one,
in order correctly to represent the diminution of gravitational action
with the distance from operative bodies. It is something like this:
The body (e.g. the earth) produces a field in its immediate
neighbourhood directly; the intensity and direction of the field at
points farther removed from the body are thence determined by the law
which governs the properties in space of the gravitational fields
themselves.
In contrast to electric and magnetic fields, the gravitational field
exhibits a most remarkable property, which is of fundamental
importance for what follows. Bodies which are moving under the sole
influence of a gravitational field receive an acceleration, which does
not in the least depend either on the material or on the physical
state of the body.
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