LAPLACE (Pierre-Simon de).

Lot 153
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Estimation :
600 - 800 EUR
LAPLACE (Pierre-Simon de).
Exposure of the world system. Paris, De l'Imprimerie du Cercle-Social, L'An IV de la République française [1795-1796]. 2 volumes in-8, half-basane, marbled, decorated spine, fawn and green coin, smooth edges (contemporary binding). Original edition of this astronomy treatise in which Laplace (1749-1827) exposes his famous cosmogonic theory of the solar system. It is in this work that the Marquis de Laplace's hypothesis on "black holes" is stated, a few years after the work on the subject by the Reverend John Michell (1783): there are therefore in celestial spaces, dark bodies [...]. A luminous star of the same density as the earth, and whose diameter would be two hundred and fifty times greater than that of the sun, would not allow, by virtue of its attraction, any of its rays to reach us; it is therefore possible that the largest luminous bodies in the universe are, by this very fact, invisible (vol. II, p. 305). By questioning the possible existence of these massive stars, where the speed of liberation is greater than the speed of light, i.e. more than 300,000 km/s (!), Laplace had just participated in the invention of the concept of the "black hole", the very term of which was coined in 1969 by the American scientist John Wheeler. It should be noted that this idea only appears in the first and second editions of Laplace's treatise. Wet stamp on the title of the University of Basel. Title and numerous very rusty notebooks, ex-libris glued to the back of the titles which remain crumpled.
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