Here was a difficulty which long puzzled mathematicians. One after another was foiled by it. Halley, an English mathematician, had detected the difficulty, but no English mathematician was able to grapple with it. Contented with Newton’s fame, they had suffered their Continental rivals to shoot far ahead in the course he had pointed out. But the best Continental mathematicians were defeated. In papers of acknowledged merit, adorned by a variety of new processes, and showing a deep insight into the question at issue, they yet arrived, one and all, at the same conclusion—failure.
Ninety years elapsed before the true explanation was offered by the great mathematician Laplace. A full exposition of his views would be out of place in such a paper as the present, but, briefly, they amount to this:—
The moon travels in her orbit, swayed chiefly by the earth’s attraction. But the sun, though greatly more distant, yet, owing to the immensity of his mass, plays an important part in guiding our satellite. His influence tends to relieve the moon, in part, from the earth’s sway. Thus she travels in a wider orbit, and with a slower motion, than she would have but for the sun’s influence. Now the earth is not at all times equally distant from the sun, and his influence upon the moon is accordingly variable. In winter, when the earth is nearest to the sun, his influence is greatest. The lunar month, accordingly (though the difference is very slight), is longer in winter than in summer. This variation had long been recognised as the moon’s ‘annual equation;’ but Laplace was the first to point out that the variation is itself slowly varying. The earth’s orbit is slowly changing in shape—becoming more and more nearly circular year by year. As the greater axis of her orbit is unchanging, it is clear that the actual extent of the orbit is slowly increasing. Thus, the moon is slightly released from the sun’s influence year by year, and so brought more and more under the earth’s influence. She travels, therefore, continually faster and faster, though the change is indeed but a very minute one;—only to be detected in long intervals of time. Also the moon’s _acceleration_, as the change is termed, is only temporary, and will in due time be replaced by an equally gradual retardation.