Clifford's attempt to test his gravitation hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper explores William Kingdon Clifford's early hypothesis that matter causes space to curve, analyzing his 1870 solar eclipse observation as a test of his gravitation ideas before Einstein.

Contribution

It investigates Clifford's attempt to empirically test his space-curvature hypothesis through eclipse observations, highlighting its historical significance and limitations.

Findings

Clifford's observation was inconclusive in confirming space curvature.

The work emphasizes Clifford's pioneering ideas preceding Einstein.

Historical analysis of Clifford's experimental approach.

Abstract

Almost half a century before Einstein expounded his general theory of relativity, the English mathematician William Kingdon Clifford argued that space might not be Euclidean and proposed that matter is nothing but a small distortion in that spatial curvature. He further proposed that matter in motion is not more than the simple variation in space of this distortion. In this work, we conjecture that Clifford went further than his aforementioned proposals, as he tried to show that matter effectively curves space. For this purpose he made an unsuccessful observation on the change of the plane of polarization of the skylight during the solar eclipse of December 22, 1870 in Sicily.