118 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



THE TRUE CAUSE OF PRECESSION 



Not only did Newton omit to take into account the 

 outstanding factor of the stellar resultant, but he also 

 violated his own third law of motion, namely, that every 

 action has its equal and opposite reaction, by failing to 

 deduce the fact of the sun's recoil. However, his delin- 

 quency in this respect was excusable and trifling in com- 

 parison with that of his army of followers who, despite 

 their after-acquired knowledge of the sun's flight and of 

 that remarkable instrument, the gyroscope, have lacked 

 the acumen and initiative to divine that the sun's journey 

 in space is not the ultimate, uncaused abnormality hereto- 

 fore surmised, but the plain, dynamical effect of patent 

 causes. 



In order to present my own conception of the func- 

 tioning of the Prime Resultant, of the cause of precession, 

 of the nature and elements of the solar orbit, of the sig- 

 nificance of the poles of the ecliptic and the geographical 

 poles, etc., I shall request the reader to picture to his 

 mind's eye an immense sphere suspended in space (com- 

 pare Figs. 3 and 4) on the order of 4,000,000,000,000 of 

 miles in diameter and to imagine inscribed thereon an 

 equator and Arctic and Antarctic circles. We will call 

 this the Gravisphere; and the center of it, to which the 

 axis of the earth is continuously directed, will be the 

 Vertex. Next, I will ask you to imagine the Antarctic 

 zone of this sphere to be sliced off and removed, exposing 

 to view the plane of that Circle. This plane, then, in my 

 conception, is the invariable plane of the solar system and 

 its boundary (Fig. 4), is the line of the sun's path, 

 around which, as we look down upon it from the south, he 

 revolves (carrying his system, of course, with him) in 

 the contra-clockwise direction; he himself rotating on 

 his axis, and the planets revolving around him, in just 

 the opposite way (as indicated by the arrow points). The 

 size of this orbit is indeed stupendous, measuring, as will 

 later be shown, no less than 750,000,000,000 miles from 

 the Centrum (its center) to its circumference; that is, 

 about 270 times Neptune's distance from the sun, or 8,000 



