202 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



to the principle of equilibrium, argue that the tail ought 

 to point toward the sun, his attraction upon it being su- 

 perior to that of the nucleus; just as though the latter 

 were something nailed to the sky and had itself no af- 

 finity, not to mention superior affinity, for the sun. In 

 nature, comets exhibit tails only for a few weeks, or at 

 most months, before and after their perihelion passage, 

 and invariably point them away from the sun. Some- 

 times these tails are upwards of a hundred million miles 

 in length, and in order for the tip to remain behind the 

 nucleus, the former has been known to cover a distance 

 of 40,000 miles in a single second! 



Imagine such a comet suddenly clapped into a giant 

 test-tube and the tube gently lowered to the sun; where 

 would you expect to find the nucleus 1 Surely not in the 

 top of the tube ! And the lighter gases, would you look 

 for them to precipitate to the bottom? Of course not! 

 Conceive the tube with its contents translated back 

 again to its old place in the heavens and the container an- 

 nihilated, can you conjure up any good gravitational rea- 

 son why the tail should now alter its poise? No! Com- 

 etary tails, far from contradicting the principle of gravi- 

 tation, positively illustrate and confirm it, as do they 

 likewise vindicate the universality of the natural law of 

 equilibrium. 



Yet such is the singular perversity of Newtonian 

 philosophy that it has actually gone to work and in- 

 vented a new cosmic " force" to counteract gravity in 

 order to bring about the very thing gravitation implies! 

 Astronomers call this chimerical thing "light repul- 

 sion", and, to eke out its already developed shortcom- 

 ings, they have tacked on to it an even more ethereal 

 idea, which they call "electric repulsion". They tell 

 us, with Pickwickian seriousness, that the sun's light 

 exerts a pressure upon the infinitesimal motes of co- 

 metic matter, not only strong enough to counteract the 

 solar gravity, but also to carry the particles outward 

 with the velocity of light itself. Expanding this idea, 

 they go on and picture to a wondering laity how come- 



