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Show Page 215 and diameters of the planets...with their densities. These investigations resulted in the development of the following beautiful law: THE CUBE ROOTS OF THE DENSITIES OF THE PLANETS ARE AS THE SQUARE ROOTS OF THEIR PERIODS OF ROTATION " 11 Orson's formula is only partially demonstrable - it works perfectly for the first five planets, but for the planets Saturn and Uranus, the calculations fall short; for Uranus and Neptune, the disparity involves several hours difference. Though all heavenly bodies do not conform to Orson's theory, still it is significant - he had found, to his satisfaction, one more astronomical proof for his ideology of perfect order in the universe. His own philosophy of Mormonism implied a strict correspondence between mass and motion, for movement was proof of intelligent substance at work. The formula was announced in the columns of the Deseret News: "Professor Orson Pratt, by whom the LAW OF PLANETARY ROTATION was discovered on the eleventh day of November, 1854, will lecture before the "Universal Scientific Society" at the Social Hall...Admission free." 12 Orson spent the summer working and lecturing on the formation of the solar system and building a new two-story house for a part of his family. School teaching went on, without much financial reward - he advertised: "Come gentlemen, hand in your names to brother Pratt, secure for yourselves 13 a suitable room, and prepare to be governors, statesmen, philosophers..." The days were long and hot, and Orson celebrated Independence Day with ice cream and ice water, bursting melons on the edge of the canal. This was as leisurely as things could get for him - his impulse was always to be measuring Zion and expanding her stakes, to be interpreting and rationalizing the very motions of the planets on a Mormon scale. The boundaries of the "Promised Land" had never really been fixed, so Orson drove north with the Prophet on a surveying expedition to the Oregon border. They traveled through burgeoning settlements of Kaysville, Bingham's Ford (now Ogden) , and went as far as the "Malade," a small stream |