I hope to prove later on, that all matter has an aetherial origin, and if that be correct, then the origin of a planet briefly outlined can be accepted without violating the results of experience or experiment, and to that extent will be philosophically correct.
Dr. Larmor speaks of the aetherial constitution of matter, and refers to the views of Faraday and Davy in support of such a theory, while Lord Kelvin has referred to the same principle in an article on the “Condensation of Gravitational Matter in any part of the Universe” (Phil. Mag., July 1902). So that if it be possible for Aether to be condensed, and so form the nucleus of a planet or satellite, then, seeing that the Aether is universal, any planet or satellite or meteor may be formed in any part of the solar system; and the process has only to be continued, until we have planets of various sizes at various distances from the central body, the sun.
Here, therefore, at any rate, is a physical hypothesis which will satisfactorily account for all the different distances of the various planets. Apart from some such hypothesis, I fail to see how we can account for the irregularity that exists between planetary distances, when viewed from the standpoint of their masses and their densities.
Further, such a conception is entirely in harmony with the view of the dual character of the motions or powers of the aetherial medium, that would co-exist with the evolution and development of the planet. For, as the planet was evolved and developed from the aetherial medium which surrounded it on every side, two motions would be developed and grow with it--the centrifugal force or motion, and the centripetal motion of the Aether, or the attractive force known as Gravity. Thus, through all the growth and development of a planet, these two powers, the centripetal force and the centrifugal force, would be co-equal and co-existent.
The same truth applies to the sun or any other body in the universe; so that, if a planet, as the Earth, was formed in the beginning at its mean distance of 92,700,000 miles, then the joint centripetal motions produced by the Earth and sun in the Aether, would always equal the joint centrifugal motions produced by the same two bodies, simply because the two laws are the exact opposite of each other both in regard to intensity, distance, and magnitude.
Thus the Earth would always occupy its relative position in relation to the sun that it occupies to-day, as long as the two aetherial forces or motions, the centripetal and the centrifugal, exist. With this brief outline of a planet's history, we are now in a position to form a physical picture of the solar system when it first existed in the beginning.
We find the sun then occupying its centre. At various distances, we find the various planets situated without any regard to their relative masses or densities, as the following table shows. (The mass of sun is taken as unity.)
| mean distance. | mass. | density. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | 35,900,000 | 1/7,636,440 | 6.85 | ||
| Venus | 67,000,000 | 1/397,000 | 4.81 | ||
| Earth | 92,700,000 | 1/324,439 | 5.66 | ||
| Mars | 141,000,000 | 1/2,994,790 | 4.01 | ||
| Jupiter | 482,000,000 | 1/1,048 | 1.38 | ||
| Saturn | 884,000,000 | 1/3,529 | .75 | ||
| Uranus | 1,780,000,000 | 1/22,020 | 1.28 | ||
| Neptune | 2,780,000,000 | 1/18,520 | 1.15 |
Now, in order for any of these planets to fulfil Newton's First Law of Motion, the sun, which occupies the centre of the solar system, must be assumed to have no rotatory or orbital motion of its own; because, so long as it has a rotatory motion on its axis, or an orbital motion of its own through space, so long will even the first part of Newton's First Law of Motion be inapplicable to the solar system.
But if the sun can be assumed to possess at some point in its history no orbital motion, or rotatory motion on its axis, then the physical interpretation of the first law of motion can be physically conceived, and a planet at rest will remain at rest relatively to its central body, the sun, for ever.