The statistics of the gravitational field arising from an inhomogenous system of particles

In this paper we extend Chandrasekhar and von Neumann's analysis of the sta tistics of the gravitational field to systems in which particles (e.g. star s, galaxies) are not homogeneously distributed. We derive a distribution fu nction W (F, dF/dt) giving the joint probability that a test particle is su bject to a force F and an associated rate of change of F given by dF/dt. We calculate the first moment of dF/dt to study the effects of inhomogenity o n dynamical friction.