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THE
EVOLUTION OF WORLDS
FROM NEBULAE
BY
LEE PARKER DEAN.
Who formed the countless worlds on high,
Who gave to them their speed,
Who keeps them all within their bounds,
Who guides each fiery steed;
Who plans for them their distances,
Moves them in mighty space,
Revealing wisdom and not chance;—
Whose hand but God’s there trace?
For what seems chance at simple gaze
The impress bears of thought,
When studied close in all their ways
Worlds cannot spring from naught.
BRIDGEPORT, CONN.:
THE MARIGOLD PRINTING COMPANY.
1894.
Copyright.
LEE PARKER DEAN.
1894.
TO THE LOVED PARENTS AND AUNT WHO WATCHED OVER US IN THE DAYS OF OUR
CHILDHOOD, AND ARE NOW CHANGED FROM MORTAL TO IMMORTAL, THIS VOLUME IS
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
L. P. D.
TO THE READER.
THE AUTHOR SENDS OUT THIS LITTLE BOOK FEELING THAT IF THEREBY HE HAS
MADE MORE CLEAR THE UNSEEN HAND THAT EVOLVED AND STILL CONTROLS THE
UNIVERSE HE WILL BE AMPLY REWARDED.
L. P. D.
BRIDGEPORT, JUNE, 1894.
THE EVOLUTION OF WORLDS FROM NEBULAE.
INTRODUCTION.
The theory of world-formation as conceived by the Nebular hypothesis
has been briefly stated by Dr. H. W. Warren in the following words:
“All the matter composing all the bodies of the sun, planets, and their
satellites, once existed in an exceedingly diffused state; rarer than
any gas with which we are acquainted, filling a space larger than the
orbit of Neptune. Gravitation gradually contracted this matter into
a condensing globe of immense extent. Some parts would naturally be
denser than others, and in the course of contraction a rotary motion,
it is affirmed, would be engendered. Rotation would flatten the globe
somewhat in the line of its axis.
Contracting still more, the rarer gases, aided by centrifugal force,
would be left behind as a ring that would ultimately be separated, like
Saturn’s ring, from the retreating body. There would naturally be some
places in this ring denser than others; these would gradually absorb
all the ring into a planet, and still revolve about the central mass,
and still rotate on its own axis, throwing off rings from itself.
Thus the planet Neptune would be left behind in the first sun-ring,
to make its one moon; the planet Uranus left in the next sun-ring;
and so on down to Mercury. The outer planets would cool off first,
become habitable, and, as the sun contracted and they radiated their
own heat, become refrigerated and left behind by the retreating sun.
The four great classes of facts confirmatory of this hypothesis are as
follows: 1st. All the planets move in the same direction and nearly in
the same plane, as if thrown off from one equator; 2d. The motions of
the satellites about their primaries are mostly in the same direction
as that of their primaries about the sun; 3d. The rotation of most
of these bodies on their axes, and also of the sun, is in the same
direction as the motion of the planets about the sun; 4th. The orbits
of the planets, excluding asteroids, and their satellites, have but a
comparatively small eccentricity; 5th. Certain nebulae are observable
which are not yet condensed into solids, but are still bright gas.”[1]
The nebular hypothesis above stated was advanced by astronomers
early in the eighteenth century, and later established by Laplace on
a mathematical basis, who at the same time advocated the theory as
materialistic. It is accepted quite generally by astronomers at the
present day, though in a greatly modified form; for there are many
difficulties in the way of a full belief of the theory. Sir Robert
Ball in a late work says of Herschel’s belief of the transmutation of
nebulae into stars; “To establish this theory it would be necessary
to watch the actual condensation of one single nebula from the
primitive gaseous condition down to the stellar points. It may easily
be conceived that such a process would require a vast lapse of time,
perhaps enormously greater than the period between the invention of the
telescope and the present moment. It may at all events be confidently
asserted that this condensation of a nebula into a star is a process
which has never been witnessed.” Concerning the theory of Laplace
he tells us that it is “almost incapable of receiving any direct
testimony;” and gives as the verdict of science, the words of Newcomb;
“At the present time the nebular hypothesis is only indicated by the
general tendencies of the laws of nature.”
According to this theory,—if all the planets are of the same substance
as the earth on which we live, and of the greater sun from which they
have ages since been separated,—there must once have been material
heavy as rock and earth after condensation, filling the space around
our sun in every direction for 3,000 millions of miles. If we could
learn _how_ this material of fire-mist originated we could better
understand the mystery of world-making. A theory that would explain the
formation of our own solar system should explain the formation of all
the suns in space, a state of fire-mist for one implying the same for
all. Let us consider whether there may not be other explanations of the
phenomena in question fully as credible as the one given, and quite as
consistent with all the known laws of nature.
CHAPTER I.
EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION.
1st. _Expansion._ It is supposed by the nebular hypothesis that the
planets were all formed from rings of condensing vapor thrown off from
a contracting sun which once filled space to, and beyond, Neptune’s
distance. Let us imagine them again expanded to a like dimension,
or even greater, reaching half way to the next nearest sun, Alpha
Centauri, whose distance from our sun is computed as about twenty
trillions of miles. Assuming this to be the true distance there could
be placed between the two stars fifteen septillions of suns, each with
a diameter of 800 thousand miles. Were it possible to expand the earth
a million and a quarter times its present size, that is as large as
the sun now is, it would then be but one fifteen-septillionth the size
necessary to fill the space between the sun and Alpha Centauri. What
we know of earth, air, water, rocks, and the metals would not lead us
to suppose that these substances could be increased by expansion even
a million of times. Could there be such an expansion they would then
exist as mere atomic particles of dust incapable of holding heat with
the outside element space 300° below zero. Nearly all known substances
expand on being heated, though not often to any great extent; as,
for example, iron and the metals. But anything that is greatly
expanded cools rapidly. Then may we suppose that earth to-day could be
expanded into a body large enough to fill the great space it must once
have occupied in the state of fire-mist claimed for it? or, if thus
expanded, that it would take one year, or even one day, to cool such a
body?
We have seen thus how improbable it is that the earth could be expanded
to fill the space it must once have occupied according to the nebular
theory; and as we imagine the denser any volume is the more it will
expand can we suppose the other planets, with a volume thousands of
times greater than that of earth but a density not averaging one-fourth
as much, will expand to a greater degree? Were they all ground to the
finest dust, even like the atoms we detect floating in the sunbeams,
they would no more than fill a globe, with the sun for its centre,
whose circumference reached out to Neptune.
2d. _Contraction._ It is thought by many that the sun obtains its heat
by the contraction of its diameter, and that at the rate of two hundred
and twenty feet per year, or four miles a century. Before contraction,
then, both the sun and the earth must have been much larger and
consequently nearer each other than they are as seen to-day. If the
sun’s diameter contracts four miles during a century, to increase its
size so as to carry it out to Neptune, 3,000 millions of miles distant,
would take 1500 million centuries. But that the sun thus receives its
heat is a supposition; for how can any one tell that it contracts
each century two miles on its radius, when a second represents four
hundred and fifty miles, and two miles would be but one-two hundred and
fiftieth part of a second?
Should the earth be cooling by expending more heat than it receives,
as some claim, it should contract from the loss of heat as well as the
sun. But if earth does thus contract it must be smaller than formerly,
the sun must have less hold upon it, and with a varying gravitation,
must lose its delicate balance.[2] Yet what proof have we that earth is
to-day smaller than it was two thousand years ago?
Further, we find that the more a body contracts the faster it revolves.
The sun now revolves in twenty-five days, but when eight million times
larger and extended out as far as earth, it must have revolved very
slowly; hence with a slow revolution, and at the same time having only
four cubic rods of hard substance out of every thirty-three millions
of cubic rods, or one cubic mile,—for earth has contracted to one
eight-millionth part of the size it then was,—why did not the rocky
substance settle to the sun’s centre instead of being thrown off to
form earth, especially as the sun’s gravitation was so great at its
surface?
Professor Ball tells us that in gaseous bodies the loss of heat
involves a corresponding contraction of the volume, attended with a
rise of temperature. To quote his words: “As the temperature of the
mass increases the rate at which it parts with heat also increases.
The contraction of the volume will proceed at an accelerated pace, and
the temperature rise with increasing rapidity. Though the temperature
of the gas may at first have been extremely low it will gradually
rise until it becomes sufficiently high to render the gas visible by
actual incandescence. As the process advances still further the body
may pass from a mere nebula into a star-like object. With increase
of contraction the pressure also increases and materials which were
originally gaseous will assume more and more a density resembling
that of solid bodies.” He says further that should the sun contract
into a globe less its present size by one ten-thousandth part of
its diameter it would amount to a shrinkage in its diameter of 87
miles. “But,” he continues, “on so mighty a globe this alteration is
relatively insignificant; indeed no measurements that could be made at
our observatories would be sufficiently delicate to detect a change of
this magnitude. Helmholtz has, however, shown that if the sun were to
undergo even this small diminution of volume the quantity of heat that
would be thereby liberated for the purposes of radiation would supply
the sun’s current rate of expenditure for nearly 2000 years. We have no
means of knowing at present whether the actual contraction of the sun
takes place at this rate or any other rate.”[3]
Thus we see astronomers admit that a contraction of merely four miles
of the sun’s diameter would be sufficient to supply its heat for a
century, while a contraction of 87 miles, or 1/10,000 part of its
diameter, would give to it heat for twenty centuries, were the sun
gaseous. This being the case how is it possible to detect in this
century, with a contraction of but four miles, whether the sun is
growing either larger or smaller, or in any wise changing its volume?
When its diameter was twice as large as now it must have been so
much cooler that it moved more slowly and radiated less heat. With
a diameter of 10 millions of miles, of 100, 1,000, 3,000, or 6,000
millions of miles even, and the sun then more years than it is now days
in turning, can we suppose that it revolved swiftly enough to throw off
rings; or, with a surface so expanded, was possessed of heat to any
great amount? These are thoughts that should be carefully considered in
looking at the theory of the formation of worlds from nebulae; for any
explanations concerning the existence of a fire-mist so extensive as
to reach Neptune’s bounds are of no small consideration, and should be
open to careful scrutiny before absolute acceptance.
[Illustration: Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Warren. “Recreations in Astronomy,” p. 182.
[2] “Laplace has given us proof that the period of the earth’s axial
rotation has not changed 1-100 of a second of time in two thousand
years.”
Warren. “Recreations in Astronomy,” p. 145.
[3] Ball. “In Starry Realms,” p. 31.