PLANETARY MOVEMENTS

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1720, 10 April 1913, Page 10

PLANETARY MOVEMENTS

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY BY AN ENGLISHWOMAN. At a meeting of the Royal Institute on February 25, Professor 11. 11. Turner, lecturing on tho nebular hypothesis, said: "When the worlds were formed from tho suii's atmospliero they must liavo taken sonio definite arrangement. Bodo's Law is a formula well known to astronomers. It very nearly accounts for tho position of the greater iplanets, but not finite. There are conspicuous exceptions. Within tlio last fow weeks an English lady—Miss M. A. Blagg, of Cheadlc—lias found how the irregularities have a definite regularity of their own. , 111 other words, the law can now bo restated in a much more exact form, which explained not only tho position of the eight major planets, but also those of the eight patellites of Jupiter, tho nine" satellites of Saturn, and all tho minor planets." The lecturer said that Miss Blagg's discovery was scarcely l'ipo for publication, but she had sent him a curve in which the planets and tho satellites were arranged on tho sanio curve in regular sequences. Her discovery greatly strengthened the case, put by Sir.George Darwin thirty years ago, for the present distribution being nearly that of tho original regular deposition of all these parts of, the solar ,system, Ho (Professor Turner) confidently expected that Miss- .Blagg would bo able to show how Bode's Law could bo replaced by an exact law showing that the planets wefo deposited regularly, or, to use. an Americanism—"the sun put them there and tliey stayed put."