38 FKOM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



of another vortex next higher in scale, that of one greater 

 still, and so on to the greatest of all, the Milky Way 

 itself? 



But every rule, they say, has its exceptions, and is 

 proved by them. How can we explain the elongated or- 

 bits of the comets and their generally high inclinations; 

 or how the retrograde motions of certain of the satel- 

 lites? Comets, as I shall later show, are not indigenous 

 to our system, but are fragments hurled in our direction 

 by exploded, or "new", stars. They consequently enter 

 our nicely balanced order haphazardly, at all sorts of 

 angles, and it requires time to drill them into line. As 

 for the erratic satellites, these are invariably the outer- 

 most of their respective planets and their peculiarity is 

 clearly due to nothing else than a conflict of impinging 

 vortices. 



The last problems of celestial motions yet to be con- 

 sidered are, (1) the cause of the sun's journey through 

 space, and (2) the star streams so-called. These must 

 be considered together, for it is obvious that an accurate 

 knowledge of the first is as prime a requisite to a correct 

 interpretation of stellar movements in the large as a 

 clear conception of the earth's gyrations is to a just in- 

 terpretation of the planetary scheme. 



No principle of mechanics is more certain than that 

 every action has its equal and opposite reaction, and that 

 the integral rotation of the solar system around its axis, 

 under the special principle of the gyroscope, per- 

 emptorily demands the recoil of the center of gravity of 

 the system. Pursuing this clew, I have been enabled, by 

 the utilization of existing data hitherto misinterpreted, 

 to demonstrate the sun's path to be that of an immense 

 spiral with a diameter of 1,530,000 million miles and a 

 total coil length of nearly seven trillions ! Making due 

 allowance for this heretofore unknown motion of our ob- 

 servation-platform, the alleged "star streams" and the 

 "preferential motion of stars" turn out to be nothing 

 more exciting than optical illusions due to our own 

 change of place. Furthermore, it develops that the pre- 



