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Show Page 287 physics; for example, Mercury's orbital path does not follow the pattern predicted by Newton in his theory of universal gravitation. "Indeed, a new theory is imperatively called for...we may consider the 38 great science of astronomy but imperfectly developed." Since the days of Newton, scientists had considered gravity to be "an instantaneous force" - Orson thought this notion absurd. "How can force...pass through space without occupying time? Time and space are 39 essential characteristics of all motion..." Orson theorizes that gravitational waves disturb the ether just as light does, and reduces all dynamics to two forces - an apparent or "aberrating" force, and the resisting force of ether. The time lapse between the emanation and the reception of gravitation waves produces an "aberration" and the body falls toward an illusory point in space. This effect, combined with "ethereal resistance," Orson pictured as "an iron-wire" dragging the planets along spinning and revolving one step behind the sun. Ether, Orson explains, governs by virtue of its rarefied, or refined, immanence - it is present everywhere - incredibly porous and yet dense in the extreme, a tidal undertow on the stars. He envisioned the universe to be ocean-like, with great bodies dancing through it in suspension, 40 resisted and set in motion at the same time by the whirling ether. Believing that the ethereal sea governs modes of activity everywhere, Orson presented mathematical postulates demonstrating an inverse relationship between density and motion. The vast maelstrom brings new worlds into being by "sweeping" randomly-floating "cometary" bodies together into planet systems like ours: "Thus the process of organization or the creation of a new world is accomplished by the word of God, or which is the same thing, by his unchangeable laws...by law, materials move from distant space in regular cometary orbits...by law, they are compelled into invariable orbits...until the new creation becomes perfected, and |