Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/819

] sun is always proportional to the time of description. The same conclusions he found to be true in respect of the orbit of the earth ; and therefore he could no longer hesitate to extend them by analogy to the other plants. These are two of the three general principles which are known by the name of the &quot; Laws of Kepler.&quot; It was some years later before Kepler arrived at the knowledge of the analogy which subsists between the dis tances of the several planets from the sun, and the periods in which they complete their revolutions. To the discovery of this analogy he attached the greatest importance, and regarded all his other labours as incomplete without it. After having imagined numberless hypotheses, it at last occurred to him to compare the different powers of the numbers which express the distances and times of revolu tions ; and he found, that the squares of the periodic times of the planets are always in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. This is the third law of Kepler. He demonstrated it to be true of all the planets then known. It has been found to be equally true in regard to those which have been since dis covered, and likewise to prevail in the systems of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. It is, indeed, as can be shown mathematically, a necessary consequence of the law of gravitation directly as the masses, and inversely as the squares of the distances. By these brilliant discoveries, the solar system was reduced to that degree of beautiful simplicity which had been conceived by Copernicus, but from which that great astronomer had found himself constrained to depart. The sun could not occupy the common centre of the circular orbits, but his place is in the common focus of the elliptic orbits of all the planets; and it is to this f ;&amp;gt;cu3 that every motion is to be referred, and from this that every distance is to be measured. The discovery of the elliptic motion, of the proportionality of the areas to the times, and the method of dividing an ellipse, by straight lines drawn from the focus to the periphery, into segments having a given ratio, formed the solu tion of a problem which had been the constant object of the labours of all astronomers from Ptolemy to Tycho, namely, to assign the place of a planet at any instant of time whatever. The tables which he computed for the elliptic motions form the model of those in present use. .tSome additions have been made in consequence of per turbations which the geometry of Kepler was inadequate to estimate, and which were only partially detected by the genius of Newton. It has been considered matter of surprise that Kepler did not think of extending the laws of the elliptic motion to the comets. Prepossessed with the idea that they never return after their passage to the KUII, he imagined that it would only be a waste of time to attempt the calculation of the orbits of bodies which had so transitory an existence. He supposed the tail to be produced by the action of the solar rays, which, in travers ing the body of the comet, continually carry off the most subtile particles, so that the whole mass must be ultimately annihilated by the successive detachment of the particles. He therefore neglected to study their motions, and left to others a share of the glory resulting from the discovery of the true paths of the celestial bodies. The observations of eclipses had formed the principal object of the earliest astronomers, but it was Kepler who first showed the practical advantages which may be derived from them, by giving an example of the method of calculating a difference of meridians from an eclipse of the .sun. The method extends to occupations of the stars, and is deservedly considered as the best we possess for deter mining geographical longitudes and correcting the tables. He composed a work on optics, replete with new and interesting views, and gave the first idea of the telescope with two convex glasses, which has since been advantage ously substituted for that of Galileo. Prompt to seize every happy idea of his contemporaries, he perceived with delight the advantages which practical astronomy would derive from the new invention of the logarithms, and he immediately constructed a table, from which the logarithms of the natural numbers, sines, and tangents could be taken at once. Kepler was not merely an observer and calculator ; he inquired with great diligence into the physical causes of every phenomenon, and made a near approach to the discovery of that great principle which maintains and regulates the planetary motions. He possessed some very sound and accurate notions of the nature of gravity, but unfortunately conceived it to diminish simply in proportion to the distance, although he had demonstrated that the intensity of light is reciprocally proportional to the surface over which it is spread, or inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous body. In his famous work Df Stella Martis, which contains the discovery of the laws of the planetary motions, he distinctly states that gravity is a corporeal affection, reciprocal between two bodies of the same kind, which tends, like the action of the magnet, to bring them together, so that when the earth attracts a stone, the stone at the same time attracts the earth, but by a force feebler in proportion as it contains a smaller quantity of matter. Further, if the moon and the earth were not retained in their respective orbits by an animal or other equipollent force, the earth would mount towards the moon one fifty-fourth part of the interval which separates them, and the moon would descend the fifty- three remaining parts, supposing each to have the same density. He likewise very clearly explains the cause of the tides in the following passage : &quot; If the earth ceased to attract its waters, the whole sea would mouct up and unite itself with the moon. The sphere of the attracting force of the moon extends even to the earth, and draws the waters towards the torrid zone, so that they rise to the point which has the moon in the zenith.&quot; It is not difficult to imagine how much these views must have contributed to the immortal discovery of Newton. (See .)

Contemporary with Kepler was the illustrious whose discoveries, being of a more popular nature, and far more striking and intelligible to the generality of mankind, had a much greater immediate effect on the opinions of the age, and in hastening the revolution which was soon about to change the whole face of physics and astronomy. While residing at Venice, he heard it reported that Metius, a Dutch optician, had discovered a certain combination of lenses, by means of which distant objects were approxi mated to the sight. This vague and scanty intelligence sufficed to excite the curiosity of Galileo, who immediately set about inquiring into the means whereby such an effect could be produced. His researches were attended with prompt success, and on the following day he had a telescope which magnified about three times. It was formed by the combination of two lenses, a plano-convex and plano concave, fitted in a leaden tube. In a second trial lie obtained one which magnified seven or eight times ; and subsequent essays enabled him to increase the magnifying power to 32 times. On directing his telescope to the moon, he perceived numerous inequalities on her surface, the diversified appearances of which led him to conclude almost with certainty that the moon is an opaque body similar to the earth, and reflecting the light of the sun unequally, in consequence of her superficial asperities. The planet Venus exhibited phases perfectly similar to those of the moon. These phases had been formerly announced by Copernicus as a necessary consequence of