The next difficulty is that of rotation.  The laws [Page 186] of science compel a contraction into one non-rotating body—­a central sun, indeed, but no planets about it.  Laplace cleverly evades the difficulty by not taking from the hand of the Creator diffused gas, but a sun with an atmosphere filling space to the orbit of Neptune, and already in revolution.  He says:  “It is four millions to one that all motions of the planets, rotations and revolutions, were at once imparted by an original common cause, of which we know neither the nature nor the epoch.”  Helmholtz says of rotation, “the existence of which must be assumed.”  Professor Newcomb says that the planets would not be arranged as now, each one twice as far from the sun as the next interior one, and the outer ones made first, but that all would be made into planets at once, and the small inner ones quite likely to cool off more rapidly.

It is a very serious difficulty that at least one satellite does not revolve in the right direction.  How Neptune or Uranus could throw their moons backward from its equator is not easily accounted for.  It is at least one Parthian arrow at the system, not necessarily fatal, but certainly dangerous.

A greater difficulty is presented by the recently discovered satellites of Mars.  The inner one goes round the planet in one-third part of the time of the latter’s revolution.  How Mars could impart three times the speed to a body flying off its surface that it has itself, has caused several defenders of the hypothesis to rush forward with explanations, but none with anything more than mere imaginary collisions with some comet.  It is to be noticed that accounting for three times the speed is not enough; for as Mars shrunk away from the [Page 187] ring that formed that satellite, it ought itself to attain more speed, as the sun revolves faster than its planets, and the earth faster than its moon.  In defending the hypothesis, Mitchel said:  “Suppose we had discovered that it required more time for Saturn or Jupiter to rotate on their axes than for their nearest moon to revolve round them in its orbit; this would have falsified the theory.”  It is also asserted that the newly discovered planet Vulcan makes an orbital in less time than the sun makes an axial revolution.

In regard to one Martial moon, Professor Kirkwood, on whom Proctor conferred the highest title that could be conferred, “the modern Kepler,” says:  “Unless some explanation can be given, the short period of the inner satellite will be doubtless regarded as a conclusive argument against the nebular hypothesis.”  If gravitation be sufficient to account for the various motions of the heavenly bodies, we have a perplexing problem in the star known as 1830 Groombridge, now in the Hunting Dogs of Bootes.  It is thought to have a speed of two hundred miles per second—­a velocity that all the known matter in the universe could not give to the star by all its combined attraction.  Neither could all that attraction stop the motion of the star, or bend it into an orbit.  Its motion must be accounted for on some hypothesis other than the nebular.