Jupiter’s belts are doubtless aqueous vapor driven from that planet by
heat; similar in every respect, probably, to the primitive condition
of our globe. This vapor would not all fall at once on the cooling of
the earth, but the upper portion would continue to revolve for a long
period.
All geologists agree that the earth was once in an igneous fluid state,
and during that condition all of its waters and whatever else could
be vaporized and sublimed by heat, as the less refractory metals and
minerals, were driven away from its surface. The foundation of the
Annular System was the molten or igneous world. The vaporized water,
mineral and metallic elements repelled from it existed as a great
vaporized atmosphere that rotated with the earth.
If the earth then rotated once in twenty-four hours, so did the
atmosphere. Proctor and some others claim that the earth then rotated
in three hours; if so, the atmosphere did the same. No matter how
long or how short the period of the earth’s rotation, the upper
vapors rotated with it. Then, when and how did these vapors and other
materials composing the atmosphere return to the earth? Geologists
generally have claimed that they fell at the close of the igneous
period; but the Annular Theory claims that they did not, and it
undertakes to explain the phenomena of the geologic ages and epochs
upon this claim.
The most eminent scientists agree that the vapors were driven off
at least 200,000 miles from the earth, and many claim a distance of
240,000 miles. All of the carbon in the grand casement of aqueous
rocks, the vast oceans of oxygen now contained in the silicates,
sulphates, carbonates and oxides of the crust, as well as the nitrogen
and hydrogen in numerous compounds enormously swelled its volume. But
the Annular Theory will claim but 100,000 miles as the atmosphere
and that the earth rotated as now, once in twenty-four hours. At the
equator it revolves at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, at which rate
the periphery of the earth’s primitive atmosphere would revolve more
than 25,000 miles an hour.
Now it is mathematically certain that a body in our atmosphere
revolving at the rate of 17,500 miles an hour could not fall to the
earth’s surface. By Kepler’s “Third Law” we can readily demonstrate not
only that these vapors were thrown out into a ring system, but how far
beyond the earth they reached, namely: “The squares of the periodic
times of revolving satellites are proportioned to the cubes of their
mean distances from the primary around which they move.”
The vapors nearest the earth did not possess the energy of satellites,
consequently they fell to the earth, as the latter’s surface cooled,
leaving the more distant matter moving independently above it.