Although we have already condensed our nebula to somewhere about
4,000,000 miles in diameter, where we have shown it might begin to
radiate light--radiation of heat may have begun when the diameter
was ten times as great, or even before that--we propose to return to
the period when it had just abandoned the ring for the formation of
Mercury and was 63,232,000 miles in diameter, and became what we have
called the Solar nebula; because there is a good deal to be learned
from a careful study of our operations up to that period, and of what
must have taken place during further condensation up till the final
establishment of the sun such as it is at the present time.
When the planet Neptune was discovered, Bode's Law fell into disrepute
for a time, because the new planet was found to be much nearer to the
sun than, according to it, it should have been. All the other planets
occupied the places assigned to them within 5 per cent. of the exact
appointed distance from the sun, but Neptune turned out to be 22·54
per cent. out of his exact place, and hence the discredit thrown
upon the law. It was hard treatment for a servant that had helped so
unmistakably--as we know to have been the case--to the discovery of
the first four asteroids, which has afterwards been followed by the
discovery of a whole host of them, and that had been pressed into the
service for the discovery of the very planet which was the cause of
its discredit--but such is the world. However, first offences against
the law are generally looked upon with merciful eyes, and the Series
of Titius seems to have been so far received into favour again that,
some astronomers are said to have been looking out for another planet
farther off than Neptune, being convinced that there must be some
reason why a law that has shown itself to be right in eight cases
should be altogether wrong in the ninth. Here, we think that the most
likely explanation that can be given is, that the ring out of which
Neptune was formed divided itself, after breaking up, into two planets
instead of one, and that this is the reason why, Bode's Law could not
point out the true position of either of them. It is hard enough to
believe that the ring out of which Uranus was made--which we have seen
may have been 954,000,000 miles broad, and over 3,400,000,000 miles
in extreme diameter--could have united its fragments, after breaking
up, into one planet, and the difficulty of belief becomes greater the
greater the diameter comes to be. We have, in our work, considered the
breadth of Neptune's ring to have been 1,010,000,000 miles, but then
we limited the diameter of the nebula to 6,600,000,000 miles--we had to
draw the line somewhere--whereas it may have been a thousand million
miles greater, which would very greatly increase the probability of
two planets, perhaps even more, having been formed out of the ring.
If it has been so, the law could not apply to the case. A new Act was
required.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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