Kepler's laws of planetary motion formula_16 The area enclosed by the elliptical orbit is formula_17 So the period formula_18 satisfies and the mean motion of the planet around the Sun satisfies This captures the relationship between the distance of planets from the Sun, and their orbital periods. Kepler enunciated in 1619 this third law in a laborious attempt to determine what he viewed as the "music of the spheres" according to precise laws, and express it in terms of musical notation. So it was known as the "harmonic law". Using Newton's Law of gravitation (published 1687), this relation can be found in the case of
Speed of gravity radiation field or fluid. Changes in the motion of the attracting body are transmitted by some sort of waves. Therefore, the movements of the celestial bodies should be modified in the order "v/c", where "v" is the relative speed between the bodies and "c" is the speed of gravity. The effect of a finite speed of gravity goes to zero as "c" goes to infinity, but not as 1/"c" as it does in modern theories. This led Laplace to conclude that the speed of gravitational interactions is at least 7×10 times the speed of light. This velocity was used by