Moving points along a curve on sphere. I have two points on a unit sphere. I also have their coordinates.
theta=linspace(0,2*pi,20);
phi=linspace(0,pi,20);
[theta,phi]=meshgrid(theta,phi);
rho=1;
x=rho*sin(phi).*cos(theta);
y=rho*sin(phi).*sin(theta);
z=rho*cos(phi);
mesh(x,y,z)
xyz=randn(3,2);
xyz=bsxfun(@rdivide,xyz,sqrt(sum(xyz.^2,1)));
a=xyz(:,1)';
b=xyz(:,2)';
plot3([a(1) b(1)],[a(2) b(2)],[a(3) b(3)],'r'); % Connect ab

Now I want to move both the points a and b towards each other on this unit circle by a fixed parameter( i.e. 5% of distance between them) everytime.
I dont know how to do this. Please help using the code I have written as will help me understand better.
 A: You can calculate the vector to rotate each point about with the cross product, and you can calculate the distance between the two points with the norm, which can be used as a measure for the angle
you can do the rotation using rodrigues formula. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigues%27_rotation_formula
figure(1);clf
theta=linspace(0,2*pi,20);
phi=linspace(0,pi,20);
[theta,phi]=meshgrid(theta,phi);
rho=1;
x=rho*sin(phi).*cos(theta);
y=rho*sin(phi).*sin(theta);
z=rho*cos(phi);
mesh(x,y,z);hold on
% xyz=randn(3,2);
% xyz=bsxfun(@rdivide,xyz,sqrt(sum(xyz.^2,1)));
% a=xyz(:,1)';
% b=xyz(:,2)';
plot3([a(1) b(1)],[a(2) b(2)],[a(3) b(3)],'r','linewidth',4);hold on % Connect ab
angle = norm(a-b)/20; % 5 percent
v = cross(a,b)/norm(cross(a,b));
plot3([0 2*v(1)],[0 2*v(2)],[0 2*v(3)],'k');shg % Connect ab
set(gca,'dataaspectratio',[1 1 1])
a_new = a*cos( angle) + cross(v,a)*sin( angle)+v*(v.'*a)*(1-cos( angle)); % rodrigues
b_new = b*cos(-angle) + cross(v,b)*sin(-angle)+v*(v.'*b)*(1-cos(-angle)); % rodrigue
plot3([a_new(1) b_new(1)],[a_new(2) b_new(2)],[a_new(3) b_new(3)],'b','linewidth',4);shg    % Connect ab

this is checked. sorry i made a mistake in the previous edit
