146 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



ity. These compensating pulsations of the planets in and 

 out from center have not escaped the keen eyes of astron- 

 omers, and have led to the empiricism and near-truth that 

 the moment of momentum of the system preserves its uni- 

 formity. Unknowing the dynamical cause behind the 

 phenomenon, they construe it as a teleological ordination, 

 and point to it as the unimpeachable evidence of the so- 

 called doctrine of the conservation of energy. 



The fact that the planets have accommodated them- 

 selves all to practically one plane (that is, to a position of 

 " flatness "), which, as I have shown before, is the condi- 

 tion of maximum stability, joined to that other significant 

 fact that their orbits are near-circles, demonstrates 

 either; first, that the planets are direct offsprings of the 

 sun, or, second, that they have been members of the sys- 

 tem so inconceivably long as to be in effect indigenous to 

 it. It is otherwise with the comets and many of the as- 

 teroids, whose eccentricities of elongated orbits, high in- 

 clinations and retrograde motions are so many unmistak- 

 able proofs of their alien parentage and comparatively 

 recent immigration. Like the bubble of a spirit level 

 when first applied in test, a comet takes a series of pulsa- 

 tions across the field of equilibrism before attaining the 

 state of relative rest that belongs to perfect balance. 



THE PATH OF THE 



Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), the illustrious dis- 

 coverer of the planet Uranus, was the first to indicate the 

 proximate point in the heavens toward which the sun is 

 tending. That point astronomers refer to as the apex of 

 the sun's way and now (erroneously) declare it to be "in 

 the direction of the constellation Hercules, about 10 

 southwest of the star Vega" not many degrees, indeed, 

 from where Herschel himself located it. Since Herschers 

 day, numerous astronomers have adopted this particular 

 field of research as their life-work, and hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars have been expended in one form and 

 another in this quest. Every labor of great magnitude 



