Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/175

Rh into larger masses. As in the present state of our system the small bodies travel out of the general plane in eccentric ellipses while the big ones travel in it in approximate circles, the facts indicate that the origin of the larger masses was due to development by aggregation out of smaller particles.

The next principle is of a different character. Half a century ago celestial mechanics dealt with bodies chiefly as points. The Earth was treated as a weighted point, and so was the Sun. This was possible because a sphere acts upon outside bodies as if all its mass were collected at its centre, and the Sun and many of the planets are practically spheres. But when it came to nicer questions of their present behavior and especially of their past career, it grew necessary to take their shape into account in their mutual effects. One of the results was the discovery of the great rôle played in evolution by tidal action. Inasmuch as the planets are not perfectly rigid bodies, each is subject to tidal deformation by the other, the outside being pulled more than the centre on one side and less on the other. Bodily tides are thus raised in it analogous to the surface tides we see in the ocean, only vastly greater, and these in turn act as a brake on its rotation.

Now the retrograde motions occurring in the outermost parts of all the systems, principal and subsidiary, only and always there: the retrograde rotations of