Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly Bodies Part 5

CHAPTER XV

AFTER NEWTON

We have said that practically all the motions in the solar system have been accounted for by the Newtonian law of gravitation. It will be of interest to inquire into the instances that lead to qualification of this absolute statement.

One relates to the planet Mercury, whose orbit or path round the sun is the most elliptical of all the planetary orbits. This will be explained a little later.

The moon has given the mathematical astronomers more trouble than any other of the celestial bodies, for one reason because it is nearest to us and very minute deviations in its motion are therefore detectible.

Halley it was who ascertained two centuries ago that the moon's motion round the earth was not uniform, but subject to a slight acceleration which greatly puzzled Lagrange and Laplace, because they had proved exactly this sort of thing to be impossible, unless indeed the body in question should be acted on by some other force than gravitation. But Laplace finally traced the cause to the secular or very slow reduction in the eccentricity of the earth's own orbit. The sun's action on the moon was indeed progressively changing from century to century in such manner as to accelerate the moon's own motion in its...o...b..t round the earth.

Adams, the eminent English astronomer, revised the calculations of Laplace, and found the effect in question only half as great as Laplace had done; and for years a great mathematical battle was on between the greatest of astronomical experts in this field of research. Adams, in conjunction with Delaunay, the greatest of the French mathematicians a half century ago, won the battle in so far as the mathematical calculations were concerned; but the moon continues to the present day her slight and perplexing deviation, as if perhaps our standard time-keeper, the earth, by its rotation round its axis, were itself subject to variation. Although many investigations have been made of the uniformity of the earth's rotation, no such irregularity has been detected, and this unexplained variation of the moon's motion is one of the unsolved problems of the gravitational astronomer of to-day.

But we are pa.s.sing over the most impressive of all the earlier researches of Lagrange and Laplace, which concerned the exceedingly slow changes, technically called the secular variations of the elements of the planetary orbits. These elements are geometrical relations which indicate the form of the orbit, the size of the orbit, and its position in s.p.a.ce; and it was found that none of these relations or quant.i.ties are constant in amount or direction, but that all, with but one exception, are subject to very slow, or secular, change, or oscillation.

This question a.s.sumed an alarming significance at an early day, particularly as it affected the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t round the sun. Should it be possible for this element to go on increasing for indefinite ages, clearly the earth's...o...b..t would become more and more elliptical, and the sun would come nearer and nearer at perihelion, and the earth would drift farther and farther from the sun at aphelion, until the extremes of temperature would bring all forms of life on the earth to an end. The refined and powerful a.n.a.lysis of Lagrange, however, soon allayed the fears of humanity by accounting for these slow progressive changes as merely part of the regular system of mere oscillations, in entire accord with the operation of the law of gravitation; and extending throughout the entire planetary system.

Indeed, the periods of these oscillations were so vast that none of them were shorter than 50,000 years, while they ranged up to two million years in length--"great clocks of eternity which beat ages as ours beat seconds."

About a century ago, an eminent lecturer on astronomy told his audience that the problem of weighing the planets might readily be one that would seem wholly impossible to solve. To measure their sizes and distances might well be done, but actually to ascertain how many tons they weigh--never!

Yet if a planet is fortunate enough to have one satellite or more, the astronomer's method of weighing the planet is exceedingly simple; and all the major planets have satellites except the two interior ones, Mercury and Venus. As the satellite travels round its primary, just as the moon does round the earth, two elements of its...o...b..t need to be ascertained, and only two. First, the mean distance of the satellite from its primary, and second the time of revolution round it.

Now it is simply a case of applying Kepler's third law. First take the cube of the satellite's distance and divide it by the square of the time of revolution. Similarly take the cube of the planet's distance from the sun and divide by the square of the planet's time of revolution round him. The proportion, then, of the first quotient to the second shows the relation of the ma.s.s (that is the weight) of the planet to that of the sun. In the case of Jupiter, we should find it to be 1,050, in that of Saturn 3,500, and so on.

The range of planetary ma.s.ses, in fact, is very curious, and is doubtless of much significance in the cosmogony, with which we deal later. If we consider the sun and his eight planets, the ma.s.s or weight of each of the nine bodies far exceeds the combined ma.s.s of all the others which are lighter than itself.

To ill.u.s.trate: suppose we take as our unit of weight the one-billionth part of the sun's weight; then the planets in the order of their ma.s.ses will be Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Ura.n.u.s, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter. According to their relative ma.s.ses, then, Mercury being a five-millionth part the weight of the sun will be represented by 200; similarly Venus, a four hundred and twenty-five thousandth part by 2,350, and so on. Then we have

Mercury 200 Mars 340 ------ Sum of weights of Mercury and Mars 540 Venus 2,350 ------ Sum of weights of Mercury, Mars, and Venus 2,890 The Earth 3,060 ------ Sum of weights of four inner planets 5,950

Ura.n.u.s 44,250 ------ Sum of weights of five planets 50,200 Neptune 51,600 ------- Sum of weights of six planets 101,800 Saturn 285,580 --------- Sum of weights of seven planets 387,380 Jupiter 954,300 --------- Sum of weights of all the planets 1,341,680 Ma.s.s or weight of the sun 1,000,000,000

Curious and interesting it is that Saturn is nearly three times as heavy as the six lighter planets taken together, Jupiter between two and three times heavier than all the other planets combined, while the sun's ma.s.s is 750 times that of all the great planets of his system rolled into one.

All the foregoing ma.s.ses, except those of Mercury and Venus, are pretty accurately known because they were found by the satellite method just indicated. Mercury's ma.s.s is found by its disturbing effects on Encke's comet whenever it approaches very near. The ma.s.s of Venus is ascertained by the perturbations in the orbital motion of the earth. In such cases the Newtonian law of gravitation forms the basis of the intricate and tedious calculations necessary to find out the ma.s.s by this indirect method.

Its inferiority to the satellite method was strikingly shown at the Observatory in Washington soon after the satellites of Mars were discovered in 1877. The inaccurate ma.s.s of that planet, as previously known by months of computation based upon years and years of observation, was immediately discarded in favor of the new ma.s.s derived from the distance and period of the outer satellite by only a few minutes' calculation.

In weighing the planets, astronomers always use the sun as the unit.

What then is the sun's own weight? Obviously the law of gravitation answers this question, if we compare the sun's attraction with the earth's at equal distances. First we conceive of the sun's ma.s.s as if all compressed into a globe the size of the earth, and calculate how far a body at the surface of this globe would fall in one second. The relation of this number to 16.1 feet, the distance a body falls in one second on the actual earth, is about 330,000, which is therefore the number of times the sun's weight exceeds that of the earth.

A word may be added regarding the force of gravitation and what it really is. As a matter of fact Newton did not concern himself in the least with this inquiry, and says so very definitely. What he did was to discover the law according to which gravitation acts everywhere throughout the solar system. And although many physicists have endeavored to find out what gravitation really is, its cause is not yet known. In some manner as yet mysterious it acts instantaneously over distances great and small alike, and no substance has been found which, if we interpose it between two bodies, has in any degree the effect of interrupting their gravitational tendency toward each other.

While the Newtonian law of gravitation has been accepted as true because it explained and accounted for all the motions of the heavenly bodies, even including such motions of the stars as have been subjected to observation, astronomers have for a long time recognized that quite possibly the law might not be absolutely exact in a mathematical sense, and that deviations from it would surely make their appearance in time.

A crude instance of this was suggested about a century ago, when the planet Ura.n.u.s was found to be deviating from the path marked out for it by Bouvard's tables based on the Newtonian law; and the theory was advocated by many astronomers that this law, while operant at the medium distances from the sun where the planets within Jupiter and Saturn travel, could not be expected to hold absolutely true at the vast distance of Ura.n.u.s and beyond. The discovery of Neptune in 1846, however, put an end to all such speculation, and has universally been regarded as an extraordinary verification of the law, as indeed it is.

When, however, Le Verrier investigated the orbit of Mercury he found an excess of motion in the perihelion point of the planet's...o...b..t which neither he nor subsequent investigators have been able to account for by Newtonian gravitation, pure and simple. If Newton's theory is absolutely true, the excess motion of Mercury's perihelion remains a mystery.

Only one theory has been advanced to account for this discrepancy, and that is the Einstein theory of gravitation. This ingenious speculation was first propounded in comprehensive form nearly fifteen years ago, and its author has developed from it mathematical formulae which appear to yield results even more precise than those based on the Newtonian theory.

In expressing the difference between the law of gravitation and his own conception, Einstein says: "Imagine the earth removed, and in its place suspended a box as big as a moon or a whole house and inside a man naturally floating in the center, there being no force whatever pulling him. Imagine, further, this box being, by a rope or other contrivance, suddenly jerked to one side, which is scientifically termed 'difform motion,' as opposed to 'uniform motion.' The person would then naturally reach bottom on the opposite side. The result would consequently be the same as if he obeyed Newton's law of gravitation, while, in fact, there is no gravitation exerted whatever, which proves that difform motion will in every case produce the same effects as gravitation.... The term relativity refers to time and s.p.a.ce. According to Galileo and Newton, time and s.p.a.ce were absolute ent.i.ties, and the moving systems of the universe were dependent on this absolute time and s.p.a.ce. On this conception was built the science of mechanics. The resulting formulas sufficed for all motions of a slow nature; it was found, however, that they would not conform to the rapid motions apparent in electrodynamics.... Briefly the theory of special relativity discards absolute time and s.p.a.ce, and makes them in every instance relative to moving systems. By this theory all phenomena in electrodynamics, as well as mechanics, hitherto irreducible by the old formulae, were satisfactorily explained."

Natural phenomena, then, involving gravitation and inertia, as in the planetary motions, and electro-magnetic phenomena, including the motion of light, are to be regarded as interrelated, and not independent of one another. And the Einstein theory would appear to have received a striking verification in both these fields. On this theory the Newtonian dynamics fails when the velocities concerned are a near approach to that of light. The Newtonian theory, then, is not to be considered as wrong, but in the light of a first approximation. Applying the new theory to the case of the motion of Mercury's perihelion, it is found to account for the excess quite exactly.

On the electro-magnetic side, including also the motion of light, a total eclipse of the sun affords an especially favorable occasion for applying the critical test, whether a huge ma.s.s like the sun would or would not deflect toward itself the rays of light from stars pa.s.sing close to the edge of its disk, or limb. A total eclipse of exceptional duration occurred on May 29, 1919, and the two eclipse parties sent out by the Royal Society of London and the Royal Astronomical Society were equipped especially with apparatus for making this test. Their stations were one on the east coast of Brazil and the other on the west coast of Africa.

Accurate calculation beforehand showed just where the sun would be among the stars at the time of the eclipse; so that star plates of this region were taken in England before the expeditions went out. Then, during the total eclipse, the same regions were photographed with the eclipsed sun and the corona projected against them. To make doubly sure, the stars were a third time photographed some weeks after the eclipse, when the sun had moved away from that particular region.

Measuring up the three sets of plates, it was found that an appreciable deflection of the light of the stars nearest alongside the sun actually exists; and the amount of it is such as to afford a fair though not absolutely exact verification of the theory. The observed deflection may of course be due to other causes, but the English astronomers generally regard the near verification as a triumph for the Einstein theory. Astronomers are already beginning preparations for a repet.i.tion of the eclipse programme with all possible refinement of observation, when the next total eclipse of the sun occurs, September 20, 1922, visible in Australia and the islands of the Indian Ocean.

A third test of the theory is perhaps more critical than either of the others, and this necessitates a displacement of spectral lines in a gravitational field toward the red end of the spectrum; but the experts who have so far made measures for detecting such displacement disagree as to its actual existence. The work of St. John at Mt. Wilson is unfavorable to the theory, as is that of Evershed of Kodiaka.n.a.l, who has made repeated tests on the spectrum of Venus, as well as in the cyanogen bands of the sun.

The enthusiastic advocates of the Einstein theory hold that, as Newton proved the three laws of Kepler to be special cases of his general law, so the "universal relativity theory" will enable eventually the Newtonian law to be deduced from the Einstein theory. "This is the way we go on in science, as in everything else," wrote Sir George Airy, Astronomer Royal; "we have to make out that something is true; then we find out under certain circ.u.mstances that it is not quite true; and then we have to consider and find out how the departure can be explained."

Meanwhile, the prudent person keeps the open mind.

CHAPTER XVI

HALLEY AND HIS COMET

Halley is one of the most picturesque characters in all astronomical history. Next to Newton himself he was most intimately concerned in giving the Newtonian law to the world.

Edmund Halley was born (1656) in stirring times. Charles I. had just been executed, and it was the era of Cromwell's Lord Protectorate and the wars with Spain and Holland. Then followed (1660) the promising but profligate Charles II. (who nevertheless founded at Greenwich the greatest of all observatories when Halley was nineteen), the frightful ravages of the Black Plague, the tyrannies of James II., and the Revolution of 1688--all in the early manhood of Halley, whose scientific life and works marched with much of the vigor of the contending personalities of state.

The telescope had been invented a half century earlier, and Galileo's discoveries of Jupiter's moons and the phases of Venus had firmly established the sun-centered theory of Copernicus.

The sun's distance, though, was known but crudely; and why the stars seemed to have no yearly orbits of their own corresponding to that of the earth was a puzzle. Newton was well advanced toward his supreme discovery of the law of universal gravitation; and the authority of Kepler taught that comets travel helter-skelter through s.p.a.ce in straight lines past the earth, a perpetual menace to humanity.

"Ugly monsters," that comets always were to the ancient world, the medieval church perpetuated this misconception so vigorously that even now these harmless, gauzy visitors from interstellar s.p.a.ce possess a certain "wizard hold upon our imagination." This entertaining phase of the subject is excellently treated in President Andrew D. White's "History of the Doctrine of Comets," in the Papers of the American Historical a.s.sociation. Halley's brilliant comet at its earlier apparitions had been no exception.

Halley's father was a wealthy London soap maker, who took great pride in the growing intellectuality of his son. Graduating at Queen's College, Oxford, the latter began his astronomical labors at twenty by publishing a work on planetary orbits; and the next year he voyaged to St. Helena to catalogue the stars of the southern firmament, to measure the force of terrestrial gravity, and observe a transit of Mercury over the disk of the sun.

While clouds seriously interfered with his observations on that lonely isle, what he saw of the transit led to his invention of "Halley's method," which, as applied to the transit of Venus, though not till long after his death, helped greatly in the accurate determination of the sun's distance from the earth. Halley's researches on the proper motions of the stars of both hemispheres soon made him famous, and it was said of him, "If any star gets displaced on the globe, Halley will presently find it out."

His return to London and election to the Royal Society (of which he was many years secretary) added much to his fame, and he was commissioned by the society to visit Danzig and arbitrate an astronomical controversy between Hooke and Hevelius, both his seniors by a generation.

On the continent he a.s.sociated with other great astronomers, especially Ca.s.sini, who had already found three Saturnian moons; and it was then he observed the great comet of 1680, which led up to the most famous event of Halley's life.

The seerlike Seneca may almost be said to have predicted the advent of Halley, when he wrote ("Quaestiones Naturales," vii): "Some day there will arise a man who will demonstrate in what region of the heavens comets pursue their way; why they travel apart from the planets; and what their sizes and const.i.tution are. Then posterity will be amazed that simple things of this sort were not explained before."

To Newton it appeared probable that cometary voyagers through s.p.a.ce might have orbits of their own; and he proved that the comet of 1680 never swerved from such a path. As it could nowhere approach within the moon's...o...b..t, clearly threats of its wrecking the earth and punishing its inhabitants ought to frighten no more.

Halley then became intensely interested in comets, and gathered whatever data concerning the paths of all these bodies he could find. His first great discovery was that the comets seen in 1531 by Apian, and in 1607 by Kepler, traveled round the sun in identical paths with one he had himself observed in 1682. A still earlier appearance of Halley's comet (1456) seems to have given rise to a popular and long-reiterated myth of a papal bull excommunicating "the Devil, the Turk, and the Comet."

No longer room for doubt: so certain was Halley that all three were one and the same comet, completing the round of its...o...b..t in about seventy-six years, that he fearlessly predicted that it would be seen again in 1758 or 1759. And with equal confidence he might have foretold its return in 1835 and 1910; for all three predictions have come true to the letter.