510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thing; or if anything, also its converse.) And so Jupiter's equinoxes 

 (and if Jupiter's, the equinoxes of the other planets) are adopted ' as 

 the main cause of the disturbances of the sun, and consequently the 

 whole solar system.' 



With this adoption of the equinoxes, it becomes necessary to know 

 when these equinoxes actually occur. Now of all things concerning 

 the planets — with the one exception of the earth — astronomers are able 

 to tell us least about their equinoxes. This is because they have dis- 

 covered no law pervading the obliquity of the axes of the various planets, 

 and hence the inclination of the planes of their respective equators to 

 their paths around the sun. This inclination produces seasons, as it 

 brings the sun a part of the year above their equators and part of the 

 year below. Hence, we know but very little about the seasons of the 

 other planets. The inclination of the earth's equinoctial to the ecliptic 

 is a constant, and so the several seasons should be constant if abnormali- 

 ties were not the result of other causes. 



One point, however, about which there seems to be no uncertainty is 

 that no planet has fixed equinoctial points. The ' precession of the 

 equinoxes of the earth ' was settled back in the days of Sir Isaac New- 

 ton. At present the earth is in perihelion (the point of her orbit 

 nearest the sun) very nearly at the time of her winter solstice. But 

 the times of perihelion and aphelion come a few minutes earlier every 

 year, so in the course of several thousand years the earth's perihelion 

 will have gone backward in the year until it comes at the time of 

 autumnal equinox, when the sun's distance from the earth will be the 

 same in the winters and summers of both hemispheres. After another 

 few thousand years the time of perihelion will come in the summer of 

 the northern hemisphere. Then any difference of climate in the two 

 hemispheres caused by the variation in the earth's distance from the 

 sun will be the reverse of now. Not alone do all the planets revolve 

 upon their axes, but the sun itself so revolves. His axis of revolu- 

 tion is not quite perpendicular to the ecliptic, with the result that the 

 plane of his equator has an inclination of a few degrees to the plane of 

 the earth's orbit — and also to the orbits of the other planets. In con- 

 sequence of this slight angle the earth — and likewise each of the other 

 planets — is exposed to the north pole of the sun during one half of its 

 year and the south pole during the other half. 



Now, according to Mr. Tice's theory, the influence exerted by the 

 planets upon the sun, and retroactive, is entirely electrical, and hence 

 not the force of universal gravitation. A safe assumption, as almost 

 anything that we can not explain in any other way, may be laid to some 

 form of electric energy with least chance of its being disproved. So 

 electric energy and the equinoxes of the planets became the basis of the 

 Tice electro-equinoctial theory. What foundation stones for his great 



