110 F. W. Very — A Cosmic Cycle. 



There remains the possibility of planetary recession through 

 the destruction of the matter of the sun ? With a mass 100 

 times greater than now, a density of -gL-, a mean radius of 7j 

 million miles, and an equatorial radius at the epoch of ambula- 

 tion of 10 million miles, corresponding to one rotation in 1J 

 day, a planet might be produced contrifugally whose distance 

 would increase from 10 to 100 million miles as the material of 

 the sun wasted. This would account for the earth, but not 

 for the major planets, and we have no conclusive evidence 

 that stars of such great bulk exist. 



Another alternative remains. Abandoning the conception 

 of low density, and demanding only a sufficiently rapid rotation, 

 which is most likely to occur in a star of considerable concen- 

 tration, an explosion of minor intensity at an epoch of great 

 rotary velocity, acting radially in the equatorial plane, since 

 centrifugal force makes this the direction of least resistance, 

 may generate "by the composition of a radial with a rapid 

 rotary motion a long-drawn-out spiral trajectory, leading to an 

 ultimate nearly circular orbit. This view coincides with the 

 original cosmological suggestion of Emanuel Swedenborg,* 

 although he failed to discern any sufficient reason for the out- 

 ward progression of the planets along spiral paths to their 

 present orbits. 1 have been led to this view by a process of 

 elimination, abandoning one hypothesis after another on 

 account of their conflict with known facts. Again there is 



* Swedenborg's Principia was published at Dresden and Leipsic in 1734 in 

 Latin. There is an English translation by the Rev. Augustus Clissold, London, 

 1846. As this work seems to be unknown to most astronomers, I will quote a 

 few passages from Part 3, Chapter 4: "Reason dictates that the planets must 

 derive their origin from causes, in time and in place ; that causes are to be found 

 in first principles ; in fine that the earths in our system must have had an origin by 

 succession." " That the sun is the first moving power in its universe." "That the 

 planets had their origin near the sun." That a " crust, consisting of fourth finites, 

 which is formed around the sun, is rotated in a certain gyre." " That the solar 

 crust, being somewhere disrupted on the admission of the vortical volume, collapses 

 upon itself; and this toward the zodiacal circle of the vortex, or conformably to 

 the situation and motion of the elementary particles, so that it surrounds the sun 

 like a belt or broad circle ; that this belt, which is formed by the collapse of the 

 crustaceous expanse, gyrates in a similar manner, removes itself to a farther dis- 

 tance, and by its removal becomes attenuated till it bursts, and forms into larger 

 and smaller globes, that is to say, forms planets and satellites of various dimensions, 

 but of a spherical figure." "That these bodies, separated into globes, consist of 

 fourth finites; that they direct their course into the vortical current according to 

 their magnitude and weight; that they continue more and more to elongate their 

 distance from the sun, until they arrive at their destined periphery or orbit in the 

 solar vortex, where they are in equilibrium with the volume of the vortex." 



The part of the theory which predicates a vortex circumfluent to the sun and 

 including the remotest planet, has hardly any superiority over Descartes' concep- 

 tion, but the idea of a derivation of the planets from the sun by centrifugal force 

 of the rotating volume was original, and constituted a momentous new departure 

 in scientific doctrine. 



