How Are Planets Formed?

146. The first production of all the Planets

A vast space with a single vortex can be divided at the beginning into 14 or more vortices, becoming stars.

These stars were then gradually covered with many spots, and then destroyed each other. One more quickly, another more slowly, according to their different positions.

In time, 3 vortices remained. Their centers were the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn.

These were larger than the others.

• The planets which revolved around Jupiter fell towards Jupiter.
• Those which revolved around two other ones near Saturn, towards Saturn (at least if it is true that two Planets now revolve around it).
• Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, and Mars fell towards the Sun

Finally, even Jupiter and Saturn, together with the smaller planets added to them, converged towards the same Sun, much larger than themselves, after their vortices were consumed.

The planets of the remaining vortices, if there were ever more than fourteen in this space, turned into Comets.

147. Why some Planets are more distant from the Sun than others, and why distance does not depend solely on their size.

The distances of the planets are due to their solidity. *

Those which are closer to the Sun have less solidity than the more distant ones.

Mars is smaller than Earth but is farther from the Sun. This is because it can still be denser since solidity does not depend solely on size.

148. Why those closer to the Sun move faster than others, and yet its spots are the slowest.

The inferior Planets revolve faster in their orbit than the farther planets.

This is because the fire-aether of the Sun spins very rapidly. It drags with it more the nearer parts of the sky than the more distant ones.

This is also why the spots which appear on the sun’s surface are carried much more slowly than any Planet.

They spend 26 days in their very short circuit, whereas:

• Mercury’s orbit is more than 60 times larger but it takes it barely 3 months
• Saturn’s orbit is perhaps 2,000 times larger but itakes it only 30 years
  • If it moved as slow as them, it should take more than 100 years.

This is because the earth-aether particles arise from the continuous dissolution of the spots. These gather around the Sun.

There, they compose a large mass of aether [earth-aether], perhaps extending up to Mercury’s orbit or even farther.

These aether [earth-aether] particles are very irregular and branched.

These adhere to each other that they move as one. This is different from the air-aether globules.

These are then all swept away together by the Sun, and with them both the solar spots and also the part of the sky near Mercury.

Hence they complete not much more circuits than Mercury in the same time, and therefore do not move so fast.