Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Aug 1932
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1932scimo..35..108b&link_type=abstract
The Scientific Monthly, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp. 108-109
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
AT the end of the eighteenth century, the French astronomer Laplace proved that a system of planets moving around the sun in definite orbits might suffer many serious disturbances, but still would always hold together. Laplace's statement involved certain approximations which, though legitimate at the time, can now no longer be accepted. Geologists place the birth of our solar system about two thousand million years back, and the approximations of Laplace are justifiable over a period of fifty million years at the very best. The observational problem of tracing back the paths of the planets over such enormous intervals of time is very difficult. It can be proved definitely that the present observational uncertainties in the planetary orbits are so large that the astronomer can neither predict where a planet will be two thousand million years hence, nor trace back the planet's orbit with any degree of accuracy over such an interval of time. Attempts have been made to discuss the stability by general mathematical methods, but since it is impossible to take all necessary factors into account, one can have little confidence in the result obtained from an application of these methods to our solar system. Conclusions drawn from individual orbits of certain planets are not generally to be relied on. There are more possibilities in a statistical discussion of the orbits of the small planets moving between Mars and Jupiter (the asteroids, more than a thousand of which are now known). But on account of both the mathematical and the observational difficulties involved it is impossible to make at present any definite statement about the ultimate stability of our solar system, deduced from the law of gravitation and the present configuration.
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