If the
planets have been formed out of separate rings of vaporous matter revolving
round the Sun, we may conjecture that the different thickness, unequal
density, temperature, and electro-magnetic tension of these rings may have
given occasion to the most various agglomerations of matter, in the same
manner as the amount of tangential velocity and small variations in its
direction have produced so great a differencein the forms and inclinations
of the elliptic orbits. Attractions of mass and laws of gravitation have no
doubt exercised an influence here, no less than in the geognostic relations
of the elevations of continents; but we are unable from the present forms to
draw any conclusions regarding the series of conditions through which they
have passed. Even the so-called law of the distances of the planets from
the Sun, the law of progression (which led Kepler to conjecture the
existence of a planet supplying the link that was wanting in the chain of
connection between Mars and Jupiter), has been found numerically inexact for
the distances between Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, and a variance with the
conception of a series, owing to the necessity for a supposition in the case
of the first member.
The hitherto disscovered principal planets that revolve round our Sun are
attended certainly by fourteen, and probably by eighteen secondary planets
(moons or satellites).
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