The Astrophysical Journal · 1943 · 132 citations · 0 references
This paper is devoted principally to a statistical analysis of the speed of fluctuations in the force per unit mass, F, acting on a star which is moving with a velocity v with respect to the centroid of the near-by stars. The solution to the problem depends on the evaluation of the first and the second mo- ments of the rate of change of F for a given value of F. The statistical problem has been solved on the assumptions of a uniform Poisson distribution of the stars and a spherical distribution of the velocities with respect to the chosen local standard of rest. No other restrictions have been introduced; in particular, proper allowance has been made for a distribution over the different masses M. It is found that FF~v=_kGMnB(~)(V_3~-~F)