A Short History of Astronomy by Arthur Berry (best novels for students .TXT) 📕
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161. It was probably at the suggestion of Picard or Cassini that one of their fellow astronomers, John Richer (?-1696), otherwise almost unknown, undertook (1671-3) a scientific expedition to Cayenne (in latitude 5° N.). Two important results were obtained. It was found that a pendulum of given length beat more slowly at Cayenne than at Paris, thus shewing that the intensity of gravity was less near the equator than in higher latitudes. This fact suggested that the earth was not a perfect sphere, and was afterwards used in connection with theoretical investigations of the problem of the earth’s shape (cf. chapter IX., § 187). Again, Richer’s observations of the position of Mars in the sky, combined with observations taken at the same time Cassini, Picard, and others in France, led to a reasonably accurate estimate of the distance of Mars and hence of that of the sun. Mars was at the time in opposition (chapter II., § 43), so that it was nearer to the earth than at other times (as shewn in fig. 68), and therefore favourably situated for such observations. The principle of the method is extremely simple and substantially identical with that long used in the case of the moon (chapter II., § 49). One observer is, say, at Paris (P, in fig. 69), and observes the direction in which Mars appears, i.e. the direction of the line P M; the other at Cayenne (C) observes similarly the direction of the line C M. The line C P, joining Paris and Cayenne, is known geographically; the shape of the triangle C P M and the length of one of its sides being thus known, the lengths of the other sides are readily calculated.
The result of an investigation of this sort is often most conveniently expressed by means of a certain angle, from which the distance in terms of the radius of the earth, and hence in miles, can readily be deduced when desired.
The parallax of a heavenly body such as the moon, the sun, or a planet, being in the first instance defined generally (chapter II., § 43) as the angle (O M P) between the lines joining the heavenly body to the observer and to the centre of the earth, varies in general with the position of the observer. It is evidently greatest when the observer is in such a position, as at Q, that the line M Q touches the earth; in this position M is on the observer’s horizon. Moreover the angle O Q M being a right angle, the shape of the triangle and the ratio of its sides are completely known when the angle O M Q is known. Since this angle is the parallax of M, when on the observer’s horizon, it is called the horizontal parallax of M, but the word horizontal is frequently omitted. It is easily seen by a figure that the more distant a body is the smaller is its horizontal parallax; and with the small parallaxes with which we are concerned in astronomy, the distance and the horizontal parallax can be treated as inversely proportional to one another; so that if, for example, one body is twice as distant as another, its parallax is half as great, and so on.
It may be convenient to point out here that the word “parallax” is used in a different though analogous sense when a fixed star is in question. The apparent displacement of a fixed star due to the earth’s motion (chapter IV., § 92), which was not actually detected till long afterwards (chapter XIII., § 278), is called annual or stellar parallax (the adjective being frequently omitted); and the name is applied in particular to the greatest angle between the direction of the star as seen from the sun and as seen from the earth in the course of the year. If in fig. 69 we regard M as representing a star, O the sun, and the circle as being the earth’s path round the sun, then the angle O M Q is the annual parallax of M.
In this particular case Cassini deduced from Richer’s observations, by some rather doubtful processes, that the sun’s parallax was about 9″·5, corresponding to a distance from the earth of about 87,000,000 miles, or about 360 times the distance of the moon, the most probable value, according to modern estimates (chapter XIII., § 284), being a little less than 93,000,000. Though not really an accurate result, this was an enormous improvement on anything that had gone before, as Ptolemy’s estimate of the sun’s distance, corresponding to a parallax of 3′, had survived up to the earlier part of the 17th century, and although it was generally believed to be seriously wrong, most corrections of it had been purely conjectural (chapter VII., §§ 145).
162. Another famous discovery associated with the early days of the Paris Observatory was that of the velocity of light. In 1671 Picard paid a visit to Denmark to examine what was left of Tycho Brahe’s observatory at Hveen, and brought back a young Danish astronomer, Olaus Roemer (1644-1710), to help him at Paris. Roemer, in studying the motion of Jupiter’s moons, observed (1675) that the intervals between successive eclipses of a moon (the eclipse being caused by the passage of the moon into Jupiter’s shadow) were regularly less when Jupiter and the earth were approaching one another than when they were receding. This he saw to be readily explained by the supposition that light travels through space at a definite though very great speed. Thus if Jupiter is approaching the earth, the time which the light from one of his moons takes to reach the earth is gradually decreasing, and consequently the interval between successive eclipses as seen by us is apparently diminished. From the difference of the intervals thus observed and the known rates of motion of Jupiter and of the earth, it was thus possible to form a rough estimate of the rate at which light travels. Roemer also made a number of instrumental improvements of importance, but they are of too technical a character to be discussed here.
163. One great name belonging to the period dealt with in this chapter remains to be mentioned, that of René Descartes99 (1596-1650). Although he ranks as a great philosopher, and also made some extremely important advances in pure mathematics, his astronomical writings were of little value and in many respects positively harmful. In his Principles of Philosophy (1644) he gave, among some wholly erroneous propositions, a fuller and more general statement of the first law of motion discovered by Galilei (chapter VI., §§ 130, 133), but did not support it by any evidence of value. The same book contained an exposition of his famous theory of vortices, which was an attempt to explain the motions of the bodies of the solar system by means of a certain combination of vortices or eddies. The theory was unsupported by any experimental evidence, and it was not formulated accurately enough to be capable of being readily tested by comparison with actual observation; and, unlike many erroneous theories (such as the Greek epicycles), it in no way led up to or suggested the truer theories which followed it. But “Cartesianism,” both in philosophy and in natural science, became extremely popular, especially in France, and its vogue contributed notably to the overthrow of the authority of Aristotle, already shaken by thinkers like Galilei and Bacon, and thus rendered men’s minds a little more ready to receive new ideas: in this indirect way, as well as by his mathematical discoveries, Descartes probably contributed something to astronomical progress.
UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION.
Pope.
164. Newton’s life may be conveniently divided into three portions. First came 22 years (1643-1665) of boyhood and undergraduate life; then followed his great productive period, of almost exactly the same length, culminating in the publication of the Principia in 1687; while the rest of his life (1687-1727), which lasted nearly as long as the other two periods put together, was largely occupied with official work and studies of a non-scientific character, and was marked by no discoveries ranking with those made in his middle period, though some of his earlier work received important developments and several new results of decided interest were obtained.
165. Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on January 4th, 1643;100 this was very nearly a year after the death of Galilei, and a few months after the beginning of our Civil Wars. His taste for study does not appear to have developed very early in life, but ultimately became so marked that, after some unsuccessful attempts to turn him into a farmer, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661.
Although probably at first rather more backward than most undergraduates, he made extremely rapid progress in mathematics and allied subjects, and evidently gave his teachers some trouble by the rapidity with which he absorbed what little they knew. He met with Euclid’s Elements of Geometry for the first time while an undergraduate, but is reported to have soon abandoned it as being “a trifling book,” in favour of more advanced
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