196 = 27.804 pounds as the true weight of one
pound transported from the earth's equator to that of the sun."
In this calculation we have three errors, the effect of one of which
would be to increase the true answer 111 times, of another 28 times,
and of a third to diminish it 10 times; so that the final result is
more than 300 times too great. If this result were correct, Leverrier
would have no need of looking for intermercurial planets to account
for the motion of the perihelion of Mercury; he would find a
sufficient cause in the ellipticity of the sun.
Considered from a scientific point of view, some of the gravest
errors into which the author has fallen are the suppositions, that
the perihelia and nodes of the planetary orbits move uniformly, and
that they can ever become exactly circular. At the end of about
twenty-four thousand years the eccentricity of the earth's orbit will
be smaller than at any other time during the next two hundred
thousand, at least; but it will begin to increase again long before
the orbit becomes circular. Astronomers have long known that the
eccentricity of Mercury's orbit will never be much greater or much
less than it is now; and moreover, instead of diminishing, as stated
by Professor Mitchell, it is increasing, and has been increasing for
the last hundred thousand years.
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