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is as beautiful as anything in the Principia .
He had already proved the regression of the
nodes of a satellite moving in an orbit in-
clined to the ecliptic. He now said that the
nodes of a ring of satellites revolving round
the earth’s equator would consequently all
regress. And if joined into a solid ring its
node would regress; and it would do so, only
more slowly, if encumbered by the spherical
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