Okay, gang, let's roll.

Last time, we obtained a bit of

insight into that most famous of all
equations in classical mechanics,
better known as Newton's 2nd law.
That says
F=ma.
This particular
equation is surprisingly subtle, and we're
going to ignore
most of those subtleties, but I should at
least tell you that
one, this is a vector equation.
Force has a particular
direction, and the acceleration also has a
particular direction.
Also, you need to sum all of the forces
that might be acting on an object.
So we really have a net force, because
forces can pull in different
directions, and so this particular
equation can
yield insight into the way astronomical
bodies can move.
We also derived the acceleration, a, for
circular motion, and we found that the
magnitude
of that acceleration was given by the
square of the speed
divided by the distance between where the
center of the
circle was and where the object was
rotating around.
Now, we are ready to see what the left
hand
side of Newton's law has in store for us
by applying
it to simple astronomical systems.
Newton found
out after countless generations of
scientists and would-be scientists
over the centuries tried their luck and
skill at figuring out the problem,
that the gravitational force between two
point
like objects was F equals some constant,
G, capital G, times big M times little m,
divided by r squared.
Where we usually just use capital M
and small m to represent the masses of the
two objects involved.
Again, we're going to assume that this is
a
vector, and we're not going to worry about
putting
arrows on everything, because sometimes
that can get a little bit cumbersome.
This is simple, but profound.
G is a constant that is surprisingly
difficult to get

accurately because gravity turns out to be

a very weak force,
but we do know the value of g to about a
tenth of one percent.
Let's see what the consequences of our
understanding of these
ideas are.
First, imagine
that M is the sun and little m is any
planet.
Then, we have F equals
G-M-m over r squared and
that's going to be little mv squared
over r.
Where now we're substituting for the
acceleration, our understanding for how
things move in
a circular orbit.
So, if we solve
for v squared, we find that v squared is
equal to G-M, the mass of
the sun, divided by r.
Notice
that this is independent of our
small m.
So if we look at the speeds of planets in
their orbits, and these are pretty close
to being circular, we should
see that the velocity or speed will be
proportional to 1 over
the square root of r.
Let's see how that works out in practice.
You can see from this diagram that there
is exquicite
agreement between what is predicted and
what is observed.
Now, let's instead of considering the Sun,
let's consider
the Earth, where we know that at the
surface, the acceleration
of the Earth is given by 9.8 meters per
second, per second.
So now, we can rewrite our
force equation as F equals
G-M, Earth now.
And this is just the symbol for
our planet.
Times little m, over r squared.
And that's going to be given by m-a.
So now if
we have something like a piece of chalk,
which is our little m, we see that that
will cancel from both sides of the
equation, and so
we can actually solve for the mass of the
Earth.
Since a is equal to
9.8 meters per second, per second, we find
after looking at this equation for just
a few seconds, that the mass of the Earth

will be given by
the number 9.8 times r squared
over G, just solving this equation for the
mass of the Earth.
So if we know G, and the radius of our
planet.
We have actually
weighed the Earth.
So sometimes we actually say that the
determination of the gravitational
constant is the weighing of the Earth.
And now you can see that since r, we know
from Era, Eratosthenes
right, I mean he was the one who did it
for the first time thousands of years ago,
if r is equal to six times ten to
the sixth meters from the, experiment
done by Eratosthenes.
G, we know, is
given by 6.7 times 10 to the minus
11, the units of G are a little strange,
so I'm just
going to say that were in the mks system
where we measure mass in kilograms
here.
We end up with the mass of the Earth,
being equal to, and you can work this out
for yourself,
5 times 10 to the 24 kilograms.
That's pretty neat!
Now, let's proceed to circular orbits.
We know
that the speed is constant.
This allows us to eliminate the
speed by considering an entire orbit of a
body, say one star orbiting another more
massive star.
Since the speed is constant we know that
the
velocity, or speed in this case, if we
ignore the
direction for a moment, is given by an
extremely
simple idea.
We just take the distance
and divide it by the time, and we can
choose,
any amount of distance, and any amount of
time,
because the speed is constant, and, if we
choose the
complete orbit of the object, just going
around, the
center of the orbit, OK, we get
V equals 2 pi r, where r
now is the distance from one object
to the other object and 2 pi r is nothing
more than the circumference of the circle.
So it goes one
complete revolution about its orbit in the

time
capital T, where T is the orbital period.
Now, since we know once again that
v squared over r is equal to G-M over
r squared, we can substitute this
expression for v here, and we get,
of course, v squared is going to be
given by 4 pi squared, r squared
over T squared.
So we end
up with T squared
equaling 4 pi squared
over G-M, times
r cubed.
Or in words, the
square of the period is proportional to
the cube of
the radius of the orbit.
Now this only works
for circles, actually at least we've
derived it for circles.
But in fact, a similar equation can be
derived for
elliptical orbits.
Where instead of r, we
end up defining something called the
semi-major
axis of the orbit.
But, it works in any event.
And, let's see how this actually turns out
for the planets in our
solar system.
You can see here what that law looks
like for every large body in the
neighborhood of the Sun.
Wow!
Everything works!
We're done, right?
Problem solved!
Not quite.
After a while we realised that something
was not right.
Mercury wasn't moving according to
specifications
even when you included the ellipticity
of the orbit, and all the gravitational
effects of the other planets.
The amount of the discrepancy was quite
small.
But it was real, since it was over 100
times more than the probable error,
associated with the data.
It couldn't be ignored.
Here is the crux of the situation.
When you have an elliptical
orbit, there is a point in the motion
where you are closest to the sun.
That is called the perihelion point.
And the position
of Mercury's perihelion was changing a bit

more
than Newton's law predicted.
Here, you see the
situation.
How much was it off by?
You see this penny?
If you held this penny up to the sky
at a distance of about 100 meters, the
angle it would subtend, would be equal to
the discrepancy in Mercury's orbit, over
the period of 100 years.
That's pretty amazing.
Well, you might say since
the discrepancy is so small, the
correction
to the law must be small as well.
Wrong!
This tiny problem along with several
others, lead to a profound
change in our entire understanding of the
structure of space
and how it affects the motions of all
bodies in the universe.
The important point here is
that sometimes incredible revelations can
be the result of measurements
that deviate oh so little from what we
anticipated.
It is the job of the scientist to pay
attention to these details, because on
occasion, these details can be the key to
some overarching principal that would
otherwise be overlooked.
But let's get back to the business at
hand, which in this case is using
Newton's idea of mechanics, to yield
insight into some cosmic
X-ray sources.
The summary of our results can be
expressed in four very simple equations.
The first
equation was that the speed of an object
in its orbit is
given by the circumference of its orbit, 2
pi r,
divided by its orbital period.
The second equation is
nothing more than a restatement of
Newton's 2nd law,
F=ma, and that's equal to capital G,
a constant, times the product of the two
masses involved,
divided by the square of the distance
between them.
And we also know that for circular orbits,
the acceleration is
given by V squared over r, and last but
not least is Kepler's Law that says the
square
of the period is equal to the cube of

the size of the orbit, times a constant

which
is given by 4 pi squared over
G times big M.
That's
it!
These four equations allow us to do some
incredibly interesting and beautiful
things, and we're going to
use these results to explore one of the
most fascinating x-ray sources in the sky.
Centaurus X-3, this object will be the
focal point
of the next lectures in analyzing the
Universe.
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