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RIGEL
At this point in my deliberations I recalled a wonderful book given to me by my parents when I was 10. My mother - who had a very strong sense of order - had inside written the year 1952 in her clear and beautful handwriting. The book had coloured pictures showing what it might look like out there on the planets. The creator of these great illustrations was Chesley Bonestell. Below I have copied a handful of them, in their proper order, viz.outwards from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and finally Saturn as viewed from its moon Titan: ... The Euripus, which has already come up in the Phaedo, was really a channel between Euboea and the mainland, in which the conflict of the tides reverses the current as much as seven times a day, with ensuing dangerous eddies - actually a case of standing waves rather than a true whirl.
We meet the name again at a rather unexpected place, in the Roman circus or hippodrome, as we know from J. Laurentius Lydus (De Mensibus I.12), who states that the center of the circus was called Euripos; that in the middle of the stadium was a pyramid, belonging to the Sun; that by the Sun's pyramid were three altars, of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and below the pyramid, altars of Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, and that there were not more than seven circuits (kykloi) around the pyramid, because the planets were only seven ...
Nowadays we are obtaining quite accurate pictures via space probes. Though in principle they are the same. What was shocking for me, when 10 years of age, and still making me recall it, was the fact that there was a missing planet which once upon a time evidently had been between Mars and Jupiter. In a way the was a hole (a void, a gap) in the orderly array (ladder). For there was an ideal rule to be obeyed and this was broken between Mars and Jupiter. It was the law of Bode and Titus:
In this space-time hole there was a lot of small planets, evidently remaining debris. The largest of them was Ceres. ... One of them was seized by a fish, and never seen again. The other was taken round and round to the very lowest center of the whirlpool, when another circle caught him and bore him outward ...
As we all know - and anciently presumably also all those whose task it was to know - the intensity of light (and therefore gravitation and any other fundamental force of attraction) will decrease not in a linear fashion away from its source but as the square of the distance from the source. → 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ... Stacking these potents of 2 (of pairs, of twins) will push up a pyramidal shape increasing downwards. And the sum of these pyramidal squares will generate its next 'generation' given that '1 more' is first added to the sum. → 32 = (1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16) + 1 → Saturn → 16 = (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) + 1 → Jupiter → (1 + 2 + 4) + 1 = 8 → Mars → (1 + 2) + 1 = 4 → Earth → (1) + 1 = 2 → Venus → () + 1 = 1 → Mercury Here, as we can see, a reversal (mirror view) can be imagined between Jupiter and Mars in order to account for the apparently missing (swallowed) planet.
...Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame. Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified Allah, He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection. - Qur'an, chapter 37 (As-Saaffat), verse 139–144. But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness, And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind. And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more. And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while. - Qur'an, chapter 37 (As-Saaffat), verse 145–148 ... Between the year denoted 1 B.C. and that denoted 1 A.D. there was no missing year.
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