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- Is there a website or paper that shows the calculation in detail?
I’ve read that Urban LeVerrier was able to calculate using Newtonian mechanics the precession of the perihelion point of Mercury’s orbit (1859). Is there a website or paper that shows the calculation in detail?
In particular:
In particular:
- How would one decide on the distance between Mercury and the other planets to perform the calculation of the gravitational force?
- (Can a physics student perform this calculation armed with just the planetary data in the back of the textbook?)
- A related question: is there a website or paper that shows details of LeVerrier’s calculation to predict the location of the planet Neptune?
- (I’ve read that this problem would be an inverse problem in modern mathematics and solved with computers, but can someone provide the starting point of this calculation on paper?)