Instead, then, of being discredited by its assumption of so strange a
catastrophe, Olbers's theory fell into desuetude because of its apparent
failure to account for the position of the orbits of many of the
asteroids after a large number of those bodies had been discovered. He
calculated that the orbits of all the fragments of his exploded planet
would have nearly equal mean distances, and a common point of
intersection in the heavens, through which every fragment of the
original mass would necessarily pass in each revolution. At first the
orbits of the asteroids discovered seemed to answer to these conditions,
and Olbers was even able to use his theory as a means of predicting the
position of yet undetected asteroids. Only Ceres and Pallas had been
discovered when he put forth his theory, but when Juno and Vesta were
found they fell in with his predictions so well that the theory was
generally regarded as being virtually established; while the
fluctuations in the light of Vesta, as we have before remarked, led
Olbers to assert that that body was of a fragmental shape, thus strongly
supporting his explosion hypothesis.

Afterward, when the orbits of many asteroids had been investigated, the
soundness of Olbers's theory began to be questioned. The fact that the
orbits did not all intersect at a common point could easily be disposed
of, as Professor Newcomb has pointed out, by simply placing the date of
the explosion sufficiently far back, say millions of years ago, for the
secular changes produced by the attraction of the larger planets would
effectively mix up the orbits. But when the actual effects of these
secular changes were calculated for particular asteroids the result
seemed to show that "the orbits could never have intersected unless some
of them have in the meantime been altered by the attraction of the
small planets on each other. Such an action is not impossible, but it is