TLDR
Rotations of the Planets on their Axes.—The Older Planets—No Information about Uranus or Neptune or the Asteroids—The Speed of Rotation is Arbitrary so far as Kepler’s Laws are concerned—The Third Concord—A Remarkable Unanimity—Kant’s Argument—Illustration of the Rotation of the Moon on its Axis—How the Nebular Theory explains the Rotation—The Moon’s Evolution—Special Action of Tides—The Evolution of the other Satellites—The case of Mars—Jupiter and Saturn as Miniatures of the Solar System—Uranus and Neptune offer Difficulties.
We have seen in the last chapter how the rotation of the sun beat time, as it were, for the planets, by giving to them an indication of the direction in which the revolutions round the sun should be performed, and we have observed with what marvellous unanimity the planets follow the precept thus given. We have now to consider yet another concord, which has perhaps not the great numerical strength of that last considered, but is, nevertheless, worthy of our most special attention. The earth revolves about an axis which is not very far from being perpendicular to the principal plane to which the movements of the solar system are related. From a dynamical point of view it would, of course, have been equally possible for the earth to revolve on its axis in the same direction as the rotation of the sun, or in the opposite direction. There is nothing so far as the welfare of man is concerned to make one direction of rotation preferable to the other, but, as a matter of fact, the earth does turn round in the same way as the sun turns.via the TL;DR App
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Written by robertsball | I was an Irish astronomer who founded the screw theory.