The Statistics of the Gravitational Field Arising from a Random Distribution of Stars. I. The Speed of Fluctuations.

This paper is devoted principally to a statistical analysis of the speed of the fluctuations in the gravitational field acting at some fixed point in a system containing a random distribution of mass centers (stars) in motion. The solution to the problem depends on the evaluation of the moment |/| f of a certain bivariate distribution W(E, /) giving the probability of a force F per unit mass acting at a point and a simultaneous rate of change of F of amount /. This moment |/|f is related to the mean life T of the state F according to the formula 1*1 T = “T^EEEF . (i) V I/If