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Kepler's Third Law
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The so named Bode's Law was published as a scientific
law by Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer and
Director of the Observatory of Berlin. But the study was
originally made by Christian Freiherr von Wolf ( 1679 - 1754
), German mathematician and philosopher, and divulged at 1766
by Johann Daniel Dietz, also known as Titius of Wittenberg (
1729 - 1796 ), German teacher of physics of the University of
Wittenberg, who verified the validity of the Wolf 's
calculation. The Titius-Bode Law or Rule is the observation
that orbits of planets in the solar system follow a simple
arithmetic rule quite closely.
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In 1768, Bode published his popular book, "Anleitung zur
Kenntnis des gestirnten Himmels" [Instruction for the Knowledge
of the Starry Heavens], which was printed in a number of
editions. In this book, he stressed an empirical law on planetary
distances, originally found by J.D. Titius (1729-96), now called
"Bode's Law" or "Titius-Bode Law".
The original formulation was
- D = ( n + 4 ) /
10
where n=0,3,6,12,24,48 ...
The modern formulation is that the mean distance a of the
planet from the Sun is, in astronomical units (
AUearth = 149.597 *106 km ):
- D(K) = [ 3*bin(k) + 4
]/10
where bin(k)=0,1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 (sequence of powers of
two and 0)
There is a
connection between Titius - Bode Law and the Pascal Triangle:
| Planet |
k |
Pascal Triangle |
bin(k) |
| Mercury |
1 |
1 |
0 |
| Venus |
2 |
1 + 1 |
1 |
| Earth |
3 |
1 + 2 + 1 |
2 |
| Mars |
4 |
1 + 3 + 3 + 1 |
4 |
| Planet V |
5 |
1 + 4 + 6 + 4
+ 1 |
8 |
| Jupiter |
6 |
1+
5+10+ 10 + 5 + 1 |
16 |
| Saturn |
7 |
1+6 +15+20+
15 + 6 + 1 |
32 |
| Uranus |
8 |
1+7+21+35+35+
21 + 7 + 1 |
64 |
| Neptune |
9 |
bin(7) +
bin(8) |
96 |
| Pluto |
9 |
1+8+28+56+70+56+
28 + 8 +
1 |
128 |
The following table compares the law's predictions with the
actual distances, where the addition of Pluto is a modern
modification.
| Planet |
k |
Titius-Bode Law |
Semi-Major
Axis |
| Mercury |
1 |
0.40 |
0.39 |
| Venus |
2 |
0.70 |
0.72 |
| Earth |
3 |
1.00 |
1.00 |
| Mars |
4 |
1.60 |
1.52 |
| asteroid belt |
5 |
2.80 |
2.8 |
| Jupiter |
6 |
5.20 |
5.20 |
| Saturn |
7 |
10.0 |
9.54 |
| Uranus |
8 |
19.6 |
19.2 |
| Neptune |
- |
- |
30.1 |
| Pluto |
9 |
38.8 |
39.4 |
Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630 ) was born to a poor
family, whose father finally settled to become a tavern
keeper. He was a sickly child, and was withdrawn from school
to help in the tavern and as a laborer in the fields. Because
his family was Lutheran, Kepler was destined for the ministry.
He was sent as a charity student to a protestant seminary, and
later to a college where he received a Bachelor`s Degree. His
evident intelligence earned him a scholarship to the
University of Tubingen, where he studied theology and
mathematics, and earned a Master`s Degree in Philosophy.
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Kepler learned privately of the heliocentric view, which is
the belief that the sun is the center of the planetary system, and
other Copernican theories at the university. Kepler was forced to
study this view privately because the church, as well as society,
was adamant in its belief of the Ptolemaic Theory of a geocentric
universe. This theory states that the earth is the center around
which the heavenly bodies move. Eventually, he became an outspoken
supporter in defense of the Copernican system. After his studies at
the university, Kepler became a professor of mathematics. In 1600 he
left the teaching profession to work as an assistant to Tycho Brahe,
in Prague. It was in Prague, during his tedious study of the orbit
of Mars, where Kepler developed his first two laws of planetary
motion.
Kepler`s laws are three mathematical statements formulated by
the German astronomer Johannes Kepler that accurately describe the
revolutions of the planets around the sun. Kepler`s laws opened the
way for the development of celestial mechanics, i.e., the
application of the laws of physics to the motions of heavenly
bodies. His work shows the hallmarks of great scientific theories:
simplicity and universality. The first law states that the shape
of each planet`s orbit is an ellipse with the sun at one focus. The
sun is thus off-center in the ellipse and the planet`s distance from
the sun varies as the planet moves through one orbit. The second law
specifies quantitatively how the speed of a planet increases as its
distance from the sun decreases. If an imaginary line is drawn from
the sun to the planet, the line will sweep out areas in space that
are shaped like pie slices. The second law states that the area
swept out in equal periods of time is the same at all points in the
orbit. When the planet is far from the sun and moving slowly, the
pie slice will be long and narrow; when the planet is near the sun
and moving fast, the pie slice will be short and fat. The third
law resulted as a searched for a principle with that in mind. The
third law states that, "the squares of the periodic times are to
each other as the cubes of the mean distances." Kepler announced
this law in 1619, fourteen years after the first two laws. It took
him years to find the law to describe the distances of the planets
to the sun. After much deliberation, Kepler arrived at the law that
if T is the period of revolution of any planet and D is its mean
distance from the sun, then T squared is equal to k multiplied by D
cubed, where k is a constant, which is the same for all the planets.
This third law was published in his book, The Harmony of the World.
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This formulation of the Titius Bode Law describe the revolutions
of the planets around the sun:
- T(k) = [(3*bin(k)+4)/10
]3/2
where T(k) is in years ...
The following table compares the law's predictions with the
actual revolutions of the planets around the sun.
| Planet |
k |
Titius-Bode Law |
The actual revolutions
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| Mercury |
1 |
0.253 |
0.24 |
| Venus |
2 |
0.586 |
0.616 |
| Earth |
3 |
1.00 |
1.00 |
| Mars |
4 |
2.0 |
1.88 |
| asteroid belt |
5 |
4.68 |
- |
| Jupiter |
6 |
11.858 |
11.86 |
| Saturn |
7 |
31.63 |
29.23 |
| Uranus |
8 |
86.77 |
84 |
| Neptune |
- |
- |
164.9 |
| Pluto |
9 |
245.43 |
246.57 |
We assume the
next value for the Neptune orbit: bin( Neptune )= 32 + 64 = 96 =
25 + 26 T(neptune) = 157.79 years.
In the area of very large phenomena when the time period of each
planet's revolution around the sun is compared in round numbers to
the Pluto`s period, their ratios are Fibonacci numbers: 1 - 1 -2 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 13 - 21 -
34 - 55 - 89 -
144 - 233 - 377 - 610 - 987
| Planet |
days |
real ratio |
ideal ratio |
| Mercury |
88 |
1022 |
987 |
| Venus |
225 |
400 |
377 |
| Earth |
365 |
246 |
233 |
| Mars |
687 |
131 |
144 |
| asteroid belt |
1710 |
53 |
55 |
| Jupiter |
4332 |
20.78 |
21 |
| Saturn |
10670 |
8.4 |
8 |
| Uranus |
30688 |
2.93 |
3 |
| Neptune |
60193 |
- |
- |
| Pluto |
90000 |
1 |
1 |
The orbit of Pluto have some unregularities, what induces some astronomers to belive in the existence of a 10th planet of the Solar System. In accordance to the Bode's Law, was working out a calculation for location the probable position of the supposed 10th planet
D(10)=[3*256 + 4]/10 = 77.2 * 150 *106 km
T(10) = [(3*256 + 4)/10]3/2 years =247582 days
The time period of each
planet's revolution around the sun is compared in round numbers to
the Planet X`s period:
| Planet |
days |
real ratio |
ideal ratio |
| Mercury |
88 |
2813 |
2584 |
| Venus |
225 |
1100 |
987 |
| Earth |
365 |
678 |
610 |
| Mars |
687 |
361 |
377 |
| asteroid belt |
1710 |
144.8 |
144 |
| Jupiter |
4332 |
57 |
55 |
| Saturn |
10670 |
23.2 |
21 |
| Uranus |
30688 |
8 |
8 |
| Neptune |
60193 |
- |
- |
| Pluto |
90000 |
2.75 |
3 |
| Planet X |
247582 |
1 |
1 |
This ratios are Fibonacci numbers: 1 - 1 -2 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 13 - 21 -
34 - 55 - 89 -
144 - 233 - 377 - 610 - 987 - 1597 - 2584
See, also :
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