This fact, as we shall see, has led to the
invention of one of the most extraordinary theories in astronomy --
viz., that of the explosion of a world!
Bode's Law, so-called, is only an empiric formula, but until the
discovery of Neptune it accorded so well with the distances of the
planets that astronomers were disposed to look upon it as really
representing some underlying principle of planetary distribution. They
were puzzled by the absence of a planet in the space between Mars and
Jupiter, where the ``law'' demanded that there should be one, and an
association of astronomers was formed to search for it. There was a
decided sensation when, in 1801, Piazzi, of Palermo, announced that he
had found a little planet which apparently occupied the place in the
system which belonged to the missing body. He named it Ceres, and it
was the first of the Asteroids. The next year Olbers, of Bremen, while
looking for Ceres with his telescope, stumbled upon another small
planet which he named Pallas. Immediately he was inspired with the
idea that these two planets were fragments of a larger one which had
formerly occupied the vacant place in the planetary ranks, and he
predicted that others would be found by searching in the neighborhood
of the intersection of the orbits of the two already discovered.
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