I was watching a PBS show on the history of telescopes the other night when I thought of an interesting piece of information I learned about way back in college. I passed it on to my own astronomy students.

Have you ever wondered if there was a pattern to the way planets are spaced in the solar system? Well, some plagiarist by the name of J.E. Bode (stole the concept from Titius) got credit for a weird formula that not only showed a link in the known planetary locations, but predicted where "new" planets might be found.

Here goes. Pay attention. (FYI, the distance from the sun to earth--93 mil. miles--is considered 1 astronomical unit, A.U.)

Take these numbers: 0, 3, 6 (doubling), 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384 and add 4 to each.

That makes 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, 196, and 388.
Divide by 10. Results?:

Mercury: 0.4 A.U. Actual .39 AU
Venus: 0.7 AU actual 0.7 AU
Earth: 1.0 AU actual 1.0 AU
Mars: 1.6 AU actual 1.5 AU
asteroid belt: 2.8 AU actual 2.8 AU (largest Ceres)
Jupiter: 5.2 AU actual 5.2 AU
Saturn: 10.0 AU actual 9.6 AU
Uranus: 19.6 AU actual 19.2 AU
Neptune: 38.8 AU actual 30.0 AU

At the time (1778) astronomers didn't know about asteroids or Uranus or Neptune. Bodes Law hinted the possibility of newly discovered planets. Sure enough, Uranus was found (1781), then Ceres (1801) and eventually, Neptune. The outer 3 planets (excluding Pluto, now considered an escaped moon of Neptune) are actually closer in AUs than predicted, possibly due to the gravitational pull of the sun and/or Jupiter over time.

The 23 (or so) moons of Saturn also follow this mathematical progression.
One might ask if this planetary pattern is a natural phenomena or "heaven sent". Like so many "wondrous" things found on earth and beyond, precisions like Bodes Law are considered the master works of a "creator". For me, it's scientifically explainable.
Nonetheless, it still blows me away.