As hipóteses de Poincaré sobre a gravitação

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, researchers Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein instituted the principle of relativity, which attests that the laws of physics should be the same for all inertial observers. One of the consequences of this principle is that no exchange of information can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. However, in 1825, the physicist-mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace proved that the speed of propagation of gravitational action should propagate 1 million times faster than the speed of light in vacuum. This fact raised serious doubts and objections to the principle of relativity. While Einstein would only be interested in this question from 1912 onwards, Poincaré studied it carefully and presented the results of his reflection in 1905 in two essays with the same title, “Sur la dynamique de l’electron”. Poincaré showed that it was possible to reconcile the principle of relativity with the law of universal gravitation. In this essay, we carry out a historical study of Poincaré’s hypotheses about gravitation, an alternative relativistic theory of gravitation that appeared in 1905 but which ended up being superseded by the general theory of relativity. The study of hypotheses on Poincaré’s gravitation allows us to understand the process of building scientific knowledge and the various factors that influence the choice of a scientific paradigm.