Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/02/04/17:34:20
Benjamin D Chambers wrote:
>
> Wasn't it Galileo who used ellipses like this to model the solar system?
> (Might of been Newton, I was sleeping through that part... the general
> equations and such get a lot more fun than a bunch of history :)
>
Sorry all, this is quite off topic, but just for the sake of history...
Galileo certainly did not care about ellipses : for him, everything
moved in circles, with constant acceleration.
The first one to spot ellipses in planetary movement was Kepler (it is
actually his First Law, published in 1609).
The explanation (in terms of equations) of why it is that planetes move
(approximately) as ellipses, was derived by Newton, in 1687.
Francois
- Raw text -