Abstract
MANE of the most interesting results of the discovery of the law of universal gravitation was the light that it threw on the nature of cometary movements, which had previously baffled astronomers. In classical times comets seem to have been generally recognised as heavenly bodies: this is illustrated by the remarkable prediction of Seneca: “Some (lay there will arise a man who will demonstrate in what regions of the heavens the Comets take their way; why they journey so far from the other planets; what their size, their nature.” This prediction received a striking fulfilment some 1600 years later, when Newton's brilliant discovery of the law of gravitation, which permits motion in any of the conic sections about a centre of attraction, made it at last possible to determine the orbits of comets.
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CROMMELIN, A. Comets and the Law of Gravitation. Nature 119, 464–465 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119464a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119464a0