The constant gravitation, G

Abstract

It appears that before the advent of the theory of relativity the constant of gravitation was purely empirical. No theoretical estimate or discussion of it has at any rate come to my notice. It is perhaps worth while to obtain a theoretical explanation of the constant, even from the point of view of Newtonian gravitation, in view of the remarkable success of the latter in the regions of space that have already been explored. Following Mach, one expects that the constant G should be dependent upon the distribution of matter in the entire universe: it may be explained in terms of the other universal constants of relativistic cosmology.