Computer Science
Scientific paper
Feb 1872
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1872natur...5..321a&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 5, Issue 121, pp. 321 (1872).
Computer Science
Scientific paper
I AM so afraid that this letter will convict me of hopeless stupidity that I conceal my name. For I am going to confess that I do not understand, and even feel inclined to dispute, the reasoning of Thomson and Tait, on pp. 191-194 in their great work, respecting the effect of tidal friction on the motion of the earth and moon. It will be a convenience to your readers if I quote the passage at full length :-``Let us suppose the moon to be a uniform spherical body. The mutual action and reaction of gravitation between her mass and the earth's will be equivalent to a single force in some line through her centre, and must be such as to impede the earth's rotation as long as this is performed in a shorter period than the moon's motion round the earth. It must therefore lie in some such direction as the line MQ in the diagram, which represents, necessarily with enormous exaggeration, its deviation, OQ, from the earth's centre. Now, the actual force on the moon in the line MQ, may be regarded as consisting of a force in the line MO towards the earth's centre, sensibly equal in amount to the whole force, and a comparatively very small force in the line MT perpendicular to MO. This latter is very nearly tangential to the moon's path, and is in the direction with her motion. Such a force, if suddenly commencing to act, would, in the first place, increase the moon's velocity ; but after a certain time she would have moved so much farther from the earth, in virtue of this acceleration, as to have lost, by moving against the earth's attraction as much velocity as she had gained by the tangential accelerating force.''
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