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Le Sage's theory of gravitation is a kinetic theory of gravity originally proposed by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690 and later by Georges-Louis Le Sage in 1748. The theory proposed a mechanical explanation for Newton's gravitational force in terms of streams of tiny unseen particles (which Le Sage called ultra-mundane corpuscles) impacting all material objects from all directions.
The theory now called "Le Sage's theory of gravity" was originally proposed in the 1690s by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. Fatio was a well-known Swiss personage, and the kinetic theory of gravitation was his most notable scientific contribution, to which he devoted much of his life.
This theory is probably [1] the best-known mechanical explanation, and was developed for the first time by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690, and re-invented, among others, by Georges-Louis Le Sage (1748), Lord Kelvin (1872), and Hendrik Lorentz (1900), and criticized by James Clerk Maxwell (1875), and Henri Poincaré (1908).
The success of the kinetic theory of gases contributed to reviving interest in the Fatio-Le Sage theory during the second half of the 19th century. In 1878, James Clerk Maxwell characterized it as "the only theory of the cause of gravitation which has been so far developed as to be capable of being attacked and defended."
In 1784, Le Sage posited that gravity could be a result of the collision of atoms, and in the early 19th century, he expanded Daniel Bernoulli's theory of corpuscular pressure to the universe as a whole. [89] A similar model was later created by Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928), who used electromagnetic radiation instead of corpuscles.
History of gravitational theory; HoĊava–Lifshitz gravity; ... Le Sage's theory of gravitation; Loop quantum gravity; Lovelock theory of gravity; M. Mach's principle;
Lesage, LeSage, or Le Sage may refer to: Lesage (surname), including a list of people with the name Lesage, LeSage or Le Sage Alain-René Lesage (1668-1747), author of Gil Blas; Georges-Louis Le Sage (1724–1803), scientist Le Sage's theory of gravitation; Maison Lesage, a French couture embroidery atelier; Lesage, West Virginia, a place in ...
The most well-known formulation is Le Sage's theory of gravitation, although variations on the idea were entertained by Isaac Newton, Bernhard Riemann, and Lord Kelvin. For example, Kelvin published a note on Le Sage's model in 1873, in which he found Le Sage's proposal thermodynamically flawed and suggested a possible way to salvage it using ...