Waves
Robert Hooke speculated in 1671 that gravitation is the result of all bodies emitting waves in all directions through the aether. Other bodies, which interchange with these waves, move in the direction of the source of the waves. Hooke saw an analogy to the fact that small objects on a disturbed surface of water move to the center of the disturbance.
A similar theory was worked out mathematically by James Challis from 1859 to 1876. He calculated that the case of attraction occurs if the wavelength is large in comparison with the distance between the gravitating bodies. If the wavelength is small, the bodies repel each other. By a combination of these effects, he also tried to explain all other forces.
Criticism: Maxwell objected that this theory requires a steady production of waves, which must be accompanied by an infinite consumption of energy. Challis himself admitted, that he hadn't reached a definite result due to the complexity of the processes.
Read more about this topic: Mechanical Explanations Of Gravitation
Famous quotes containing the word waves:
“In the Yangtze River waves push the waves ahead; so in life new people constantly replace the old ones.”
—Chinese proverb.
“the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies
lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,
beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up
they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising
in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-traveled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)