Studies Upon the Inclination of the Earth's Axis (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from Studies Upon the Inclination of the Earth's Axis

For example, the sun and all the planets, on this theory, ought to move in one direction, both on their axes and in their orbits; and so they do pretty nearly. Yet, when accuracy of statement is required, we are told that they all vary, the direction of no two being exactly the same. The axial motion of the earth, for example, crosses the orbital at an angle of 23½º; and, with variations in the angle of crossing, the same is true of all. The orbits ought to lie in the plane of the solar equator; but they do not: nor do any two of their planes coincide with each other. Not one planet has its axis perpendicular to its own orbit; although, according to the theory, they all ought. The orbits, moreover, ought to be circular; but all are more or less eccentric. All the satellites ought to be in the planes of the equators of their primaries; but I doubt if one is really so, while Saturn's eighth satellite is about 12º , and our moon nearly 18½º , out of place. To crown it all, the moons of Uranus and Neptune actually go backward.

If Laplace's theory be true there must be some way to account for these apparent contradictions.

My attention was drawn to this subject nearly two years ago; and the conclusions at which I arrived, as sell as the reasons on which they are founded, I embodied in my "Cosmology," an essay which forms Part III of The Miracle of To-Day.

I therein showed that a key to all these perplexing peculiarities is found in the addition to the Nebular Hypothesis of one condition, to wit, that in the gas-like mass from which the solar system was evolved certain elevations or upheavals occurred from time to time, rising and subsiding like waves upon a sea.

Such movements seem to be normal in our system.

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