Copernicus’s epicycles from Newton’s gravitational force law via linear perturbation theory in geometric algebra

Quirino M. Sugon Jr., Sarah Bragais, Daniel J. McNamara

(Submitted on 17 Jul 2008)

Abstract: We derive Copernicus’s epicycles from Newton’s gravitational force law by assuming that a planet’s orbit is a perturbed circular orbit, with the perturbation defined to be co-rotating with the said orbit. We substitute this orbit expression into Newton’s gravitation law and showed that the perturbation satisfies the linear part of Hill’s oscillator equation for lunar motion. We solve this oscillator equation using an exponential Fourier series and impose the boundary conditions at the aphelion and perihelion to derive Copernicus’s formulas for the eccentric, deferent, and epicycle. We show that for small eccetricity, the Copernican orbit expression also leads to Kepler’s law of areas for planetary motion. The formalism we use is the Clifford (geometric) algebra Cl_{2,0}.

Comments: 7 pages, 3 figures
Subjects: Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:0807.2708v1 [physics.space-ph]
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Submission history
From: Quirino Sugon Jr. [view email]
[v1] Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:02:23 GMT (12kb)