Abstract
V. WE last appealed to those branches of physical science which are connected with the determination of the velocity of light, in order to see whether we could get any help in that direction on a most interesting question, a question which, like another to which attention has been drawn, might have been considered as an open one, unless one had gone beyond the range of ordinary astronomical observation with regard to it. It has now been seen that by investigating the facts connected with the velocity of light, first, that we could determine that velocity by two different methods with a wonderful agreement between them; and secondly, that, by taking the velocity of light and dealing with it in the way we then did, a perfect demonstration was obtained of the fact that the earth revolves in an orbit round the sun. It was further seen that using this velocity of light, and also this fact of the earth's revolution which it enabled us to demonstrate, we were able to say that the distance of the earth from the sun was, roughly speaking, 921/2 millions of miles.
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LOCKYER, J. The Movements of the Earth 1 . Nature 30, 254–256 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/030254a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/030254a0