Gravitational Deflection of High-speed Particles

Abstract

THE investigation of the consequences of Einstein's law as regards the motion of a material particle moving through a gravitational field with a velocity comparable to that of light brings out some interesting and rather surprising effects. As Einstein's law is entirely kinematical, involving accelerations instead of forces, no account need be taken of variation of mass with velocity other than that contained in the law itself. Let m denote the mass of the attracting body (i.e. the sun) in astronomical units divided by the square of the velocity of light. Then the motion of a particle in the field produced by this body is determined by