1S JON IOIRILATE, 
ASTRONOMERS are not alone in appreciating the interest 
which attaches to the newly discovered planet DQ. Its pecu- 
liarities promise to be suggestive at least in respect to questions 
of planetary origin in which geologists are concerned almost 
equally with astronomers. The new planet breaks across that 
rather forcefully deduced law of symmetry which has been 
thought to prevail throughout the solar system and which has 
been somewhat too influential perhaps in controlling hypotheses 
of its origin. The little stranger pays no respect to Bode’s law, 
and is eccentric in other particulars. Its mean position lies 
between the earth and Mars, and its period of revolution is 645 
days, while that of Mars is 687. Its orbit, however, is so eccen- 
tric that in aphelion the planet’s path lies far outside of the Mar- 
tian orbit in the zone of the asteroids, while in perihelion it 
passes within fourteen million miles of the earth, according to 
the provisional computations made from the earlier observations. 
One of the most interesting features of the new planet lies in 
the fact that its velocity at perihelion is greater than that of the 
earth, although it is farther from the sun. Should the two orbits 
be brought into coincidence by a suitable perturbation and a 
collision ensue, the velocity of the outer body would be the 
greater, at the moment of collision, though on the average it 
would necessarily be less. The effect of such a collision on the 
rotation of the earth would depend upon the particular point at 
which the stroke of the smaller planet was dealt. The proba- 
bilities, however, are in favor of a stroke which would accelerate 
the present direct rotation of the earth, or which would, if the 
earth had no rotation, impart to it a rotation in the same direc- 
tion as that which it now possesses. It has been urged that 
meteoroidal bodies revolving in a ring around the sun would, on 
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