A Short History of Astronomy by Arthur Berry (best novels for students .TXT) 📕

[To face p. 307.

Laplace’s personality seems to have been less attractive than that of Lagrange. He was vain of his reputation as a mathematician and not always generous to rival discoverers. To Lagrange, however, he was always friendly, and he was also kind in helping young mathematicians of promise. While he was perfectly honest and courageous in upholding his scientific and philosophical opinions, his politics bore an undoubted resemblance to those of the Vicar of Bray, and were professed by him with great success. He was appointed a member of the Commission for Weights and Measures, and afterwards of the Bureau des Longitudes, and was made professor at the École Normale when it was founded. When Napoleon became First Consul, Laplace asked for and obtained the post of Home Secretary, but—fortunately for science—was considered quite incompetent, and had to retire after six weeks (1799)145; as a compensation he was made a member of the newly created Senate. The third volume of the Mécanique Céleste, published in 1802, contained a dedication to the “Heroic Pacificator of Europe,” at whose hand he subsequently received various other distinctions, and by whom he was created a Count when the Empire was formed. On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 he tendered his services to them, and was subsequently made a Marquis. In 1816 he also received a very unusual honour for a mathematician (shared, however, by D’Alembert) by being elected one of the Forty “Immortals” of the Académie Française; this distinction he seems to have owed in great part to the literary excellence of the Système du Monde.

Notwithstanding these distractions he worked steadily at mathematics and astronomy, and even after the completion of the Mécanique Céleste wrote a supplement to it which was published after his death (1827).

His last words, “Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense,” coming as they did from one who had added so much to knowledge, shew his character in a pleasanter aspect than it sometimes presented during his career.

239. With the exception of Lagrange’s paper on libration, nearly all his and Laplace’s important contributions to astronomy were made when Clairaut’s and D’Alembert’s work was nearly finished, though Euler’s activity continued for nearly 20 years more. Lagrange, however, survived him by 30 years and Laplace by more than 40; and together they carried astronomical science to a far higher stage of development than their three predecessors.

240. To the lunar theory Lagrange contributed comparatively little except general methods, applicable to this as to other problems of astronomy; but Laplace devoted great attention to it. Of his special discoveries in the subject the most notable was his explanation of the secular acceleration of the moon’s mean motion (chapter X., § 201), which had puzzled so many astronomers. Lagrange had attempted to explain it (1774), and had failed so completely that he was inclined to discredit the early observations on which the existence of the phenomenon was based. Laplace, after trying ordinary methods without success, attempted to explain it by supposing that gravitation was an effect not transmitted instantaneously, but that, like light, it took time to travel from the attracting body to the attracted one; but this also failed. Finally he traced it (1787) to an indirect planetary effect. For, as it happens, certain perturbations which the moon experiences owing to the action of the sun depend among other things on the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit; this is one of the elements (§ 236) which is being altered by the action of the planets, and has for many centuries been very slowly decreasing; the perturbation in question is therefore being very slightly altered, and the moon’s average rate of motion is in consequence very slowly increasing, or the length of the month decreasing. The whole effect is excessively minute, and only becomes perceptible in the course of a long time. Laplace’s calculation shewed that the moon would, in the course of a century, or in about 1,300 complete revolutions, gain about 10″ (more exactly 10″·2) owing to this cause, so that her place in the sky would differ by that amount from what it would be if this disturbing cause did not exist; in two centuries the angle gained would be 40″, in three centuries 90″, and so on. This may be otherwise expressed by saying that the length of the month diminishes by about one-thirtieth of a second in the course of a century. Moreover, as Laplace shewed (§ 245), the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit will not go on diminishing indefinitely, but after an immense period to be reckoned in thousands of years will begin to increase, and the moon’s motion will again become slower in consequence.

Laplace’s result agreed almost exactly with that indicated by observation; and thus the last known discrepancy of importance in the solar system between theory and observation appeared to be explained away; and by a curious coincidence this was effected just a hundred years after the publication of the Principia.

Many years afterwards, however, Laplace’s explanation was shewn to be far less complete than it appeared at the time (chapter XIII., § 287).

The same investigation revealed to Laplace the existence of alterations of a similar character, and due to the same cause, of other elements in the moon’s orbit, which, though not previously noticed, were found to be indicated by ancient eclipse observations.

241. The third volume of the Mécanique Céleste contains a general treatment of the lunar theory, based on a method entirely different from any that had been employed before, and worked out in great detail. “My object,” says Laplace, “in this book is to exhibit in the one law of universal gravitation the source of all the inequalities of the motion of the moon, and then to employ this law as a means of discovery, to perfect the theory of this motion and to deduce from it several important elements in the system of the moon.” Laplace himself calculated no lunar tables, but the Viennese astronomer John Tobias Bürg (1766-1834) made considerable use of his formulae, together with an immense number of Greenwich observations, for the construction of lunar tables, which were sent to the Institute of France in 1801 (before the publication of Laplace’s complete lunar theory), and published in a slightly amended form in 1806. A few years later (1812) John Charles Burckhardt (1773-1825), a German who had settled in Paris and worked under Laplace and Lalande, produced a new set of tables based directly on the formulae of the Mécanique Céleste. These were generally accepted in lieu of Bürg’s, which had been in their turn an improvement on Mason’s and Mayer’s.

Later work on lunar theory may conveniently be regarded as belonging to a new period of astronomy (chapter XIII., § 286).

242. Observation had shewn the existence of inequalities in the planetary and lunar motions which seemed to belong to two different classes. On the one hand were inequalities, such as most of those of the moon, which went through their cycle of changes in a single revolution or a few revolutions of the disturbing body; and on the other such inequalities as the secular acceleration of the moon’s mean motion or the motion of the earth’s apses, in which a continuous disturbance was observed always acting in the same direction, and shewing no signs of going through a periodic cycle of changes.

The mathematical treatment of perturbations soon shewed the desirability of adopting different methods of treatment for two classes of inequalities, which corresponded roughly, though not exactly, to those just mentioned, and to which the names of periodic and secular gradually came to be attached. The distinction plays a considerable part in Euler’s work (§ 236), but it was Lagrange who first recognised its full importance, particularly for planetary theory, and who made a special study of secular inequalities.

When the perturbations of one planet by another are being studied, it becomes necessary to obtain a mathematical expression for the disturbing force which the second planet exerts. This expression depends in general both on the elements of the two orbits, and on the positions of the planets at the time considered. It can, however, be divided up into two parts, one of which depends on the positions of the planets (as well as on the elements), while the other depends only on the elements of the two orbits, and is independent of the positions in their paths which the planets may happen to be occupying at the time. Since the positions of planets in their orbits change rapidly, the former part of the disturbing force changes rapidly, and produces in general, at short intervals of time, effects in opposite directions, first, for example, accelerating and then retarding the motion of the disturbed planet; and the corresponding inequalities of motion are the periodic inequalities, which for the most part go through a complete cycle of changes in the course of a few revolutions of the planets, or even more rapidly. The other part of the disturbing force remains nearly unchanged for a considerable period, and gives rise to changes in the elements which, though in general very small, remain for a long time without sensible alteration, and therefore continually accumulate, becoming considerable with the lapse of time: these are the secular inequalities.

Speaking generally, we may say that the periodical inequalities are temporary and the secular inequalities permanent in their effects, or as Sir John Herschel expresses it:—

“The secular inequalities are, in fact, nothing but what remains after the mutual destruction of a much larger amount (as it very often is) of periodical. But these are in their nature transient and temporary; they disappear in short periods, and leave no trace. The planet is temporarily withdrawn from its orbit (its slowly varying orbit), but forthwith returns to it, to deviate presently as much the other way, while the varied orbit accommodates and adjusts itself to the average of these excursions on either side of it.”146

“Temporary” and “short” are, however, relative terms. Some periodical inequalities, notably in the case of the moon, have periods of only a few days, and the majority which are of importance extend only over a few years; but some are known which last for centuries or even thousands of years, and can often be treated as secular when we only want to consider an interval of a few years. On the other hand, most of the known secular inequalities are not really permanent, but fluctuate like the periodical ones, though only in the course of immense periods of time to be reckoned usually by tens of thousands of years.

One distinction between the lunar and planetary theories is that in the former periodic inequalities are comparatively large and, especially for practical purposes such as computing the position of the moon a few months hence, of great importance; whereas the periodic inequalities of the planets are generally small