Page:On the connexion of the physical sciences (1834).djvu/22

10 planets; but the compression or flattening at their poles is so small, that even Jupiter, whose rotation is the most rapid, and therefore the most elliptical of the planets, may, from his great distance, be regarded as spherical. Although the planets attract each other as if they were spheres, on account of their distances, yet the satellites are near enough to he sensibly affected in their motions by the forms of their primaries. The moon, for example, is so near the earth, that the reciprocal attraction between each of her particles, and each of the particles in the prominent mass at the terrestrial equator, occasions considerable disturbances in the motions of both bodies: for the action of the moon, on the matter at the earth’s equator, produces a nutation in the axis of rotation, and the reaction of that matter on the moon is the cause of a corresponding nutation in the lunar orbit.

If a sphere, at rest in space, receive an impulse passing through its centre of gravity, all its parts will move with an equal velocity in a straight line; but if the impulse does not pass through the centre of gravity, its particles, having unequal velocities, will have a rotatory motion at the same time that it is translated in space. These motions are independent of one another; so that a contrary impulse, passing through its centre of gravity, will impede its progress, without interfering with its rotation.