Professor Adams undertook the work. Its
difficulty principally arises from the high eccentricity of the
largest of the orbits, which renders the more ordinary methods of
calculation inapplicable. After some months of arduous labour the
work was completed, and in April, 1867, Adams announced his solution
of the problem. He showed that if the meteors revolved in the
largest of the five orbits, with the periodic time of thirty three
and one quarter years, the perturbations of Jupiter would account for
a change to the extent of twenty minutes of arc in the point in which
the orbit crosses the earth's track. The attraction of Saturn would
augment this by seven minutes, and Uranus would add one minute more,
while the influence of the Earth and of the other planets would be
inappreciable. The accumulated effect is thus twenty-eight minutes,
which is practically coincident with the observed value as determined
by Professor Newton from an examination of all the showers of which
there is any historical record. Having thus showed that the great
orbit was a possible path for the meteors, Adams next proved that no
one of the other four orbits would be disturbed in the same manner.
Indeed, it appeared that not half the observed amount of change could
arise in any orbit except in that one with the long period.
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