The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Stawell Ball (fantasy books to read .txt) 📕

we need not abruptly stop our retrospect at any epoch, however remote. We may go back earlier and earlier, through the long ages which geologists claim for the deposition of the stratified rocks; and back again still further, to those very earliest epochs when life began to dawn on the earth. Still we can find no reason to suppose that the law of the sun's decreasing heat is not maintained; and thus we would seem bound by our present knowledge to suppose that the sun grows larger and larger the further our retrospect extends. We cannot assume that the rate of that growth is always the same. No such assumption is required; it is sufficient for our purpose that we find the sun growing larger and larger the further we peer back into the remote abyss of time past. If the present order of things in our universe has lasted long enough, then it would seem that there was a time when the sun must have been twice as large as it is at present; it must once have been ten times as large. How long ago that was no one can venture to say. But we cannot stop at the stage when the sun was even ten times as large as it is at present; the arguments will still apply in earlier ages. We see the sun swelling and swelling, with a corresponding decrease in its density, until at length we find, instead of our sun as we know it, a mighty nebula filling a gigantic region of space.

Such is, in fact, the doctrine of the origin of our system which has been advanced in that celebrated speculation known as the nebular theory of Laplace. Nor can it be ever more than a speculation; it cannot be established by observation, nor can it be proved by calculation. It is merely a conjecture, more or less plausible, but perhaps in some degree necessarily true, if our present laws of heat, as we understand them, admit of the extreme application here required, and if also the present order of things has reigned for sufficient time without the intervention of any influence at present unknown to us. This nebular theory is not confined to the history of our sun. Precisely similar reasoning may be extended to the individual planets: the farther we look back, the hotter and the hotter does the whole system become. It has been thought that if we could look far enough back, we should see the earth too hot for life; back further still, we should find the earth and all the planets red-hot; and back further still, to an exceedingly remote epoch, when the planets would be heated just as much as our sun is now. In a still earlier stage the whole solar system is thought to have been one vast mass of glowing gas, from which the present forms of the sun, with the planets and their satellites, have been gradually evolved. We cannot be sure that the course of events has been what is here indicated; but there are sufficient grounds for thinking that this doctrine substantially represents what has actually occurred.

Many of the features in the solar system harmonise with the supposition that the origin of the system has been that suggested by the nebular theory. We have already had occasion in an earlier chapter to allude to the fact that all the planets perform their revolutions around the sun in the same direction. It is also to be observed that the rotation of the planets on their axes, as well as the movements of the satellites around their primaries, all follow the same law, with two slight exceptions in the case of the Uranian and Neptunian systems. A coincidence so remarkable naturally suggests the necessity for some physical explanation. Such an explanation is offered by the nebular theory. Suppose that countless ages ago a mighty nebula was slowly rotating and slowly contracting. In the process of contraction, portions of the condensed matter of the nebula would be left behind. These portions would still revolve around the central mass, and each portion would rotate on its axis in the same direction. As the process of contraction proceeded, it would follow from dynamical principles that the velocity of rotation would increase; and thus at length these portions would consolidate into planets, while the central mass would gradually contract to form the sun. By a similar process on a smaller scale the systems of satellites were evolved from the contracting primary. These satellites would also revolve in the same direction, and thus the characteristic features of the solar system could be accounted for.

The nebular origin of the solar system receives considerable countenance from the study of the sidereal heavens. We have already dwelt upon the resemblance between the sun and the stars. If, then, our sun has passed through such changes as the nebular theory requires, may we not anticipate that similar phenomena should be met with in other stars? If this be so, it is reasonable to suppose that the evolution of some of the stars may not have progressed so far as has that of the sun, and thus we may be able actually to witness stars in the earlier phases of their development. Let us see how far the telescope responds to these anticipations.

The field of view of a large telescope usually discloses a number of stars scattered over a black background of sky; but the blackness of the background is not uniform: the practised eye of the skilled observer will detect in some parts of the heavens a faint luminosity. This will sometimes be visible over the whole extent of the field, or it may even occupy several fields. Years may pass on, and still there is no perceptible change. There can be no illusion, and the conclusion is irresistible that the object is a stupendous mass of faintly luminous glowing gas or vapour. This is the simplest type of nebula; it is characterised by extreme faintness, and seems composed of matter of the utmost tenuity. On the other hand we are occasionally presented with the beautiful and striking phenomenon of a definite and brilliant star surrounded by a luminous atmosphere. Between these two extreme types of a faint diffused mass on the one hand, and a bright star with a nebula surrounding it on the other, a graduated series of various other nebulae can be arranged. We thus have a series of links passing by imperceptible gradations from the most faintly diffused nebulae on the one side, into stars on the other.

The nebulae seemed to Herschel to be vast masses of phosphorescent vapour. This vapour gradually cools down, and ultimately condenses into a star, or a cluster of stars. When the varied forms of nebulae were classified, it almost seemed as if the different links in the process could be actually witnessed. In the vast faint nebulae the process of condensation had just begun; in the smaller and brighter nebulae the condensation had advanced farther; while in others, the star, or stars, arising from the condensation had already become visible.

But, it may be asked, how did Herschel know this? what is his evidence? Let us answer this question by an illustration. Go into a forest, and look at a noble old oak which has weathered the storm for centuries; have we any doubt that the oak-tree was once a young small plant, and that it grew stage by stage until it reached maturity? Yet no one has ever followed an oak-tree through its various stages; the brief span of human life has not been long enough to do so. The reason why we believe the oak-tree to have passed through all these stages is, because we are familiar with oak-trees of every gradation in size, from the seedling up to the noble veteran. Having seen this gradation in a vast multitude of trees, we are convinced that each individual passes through all these stages.

It was by a similar train of reasoning that Herschel was led to adopt the view of the origin of the stars which we have endeavoured to describe. The astronomer's life is not long enough, the life of the human race might not be long enough, to watch the process by which a nebula condenses down so as to form a solid body. But by looking at one nebula after another, the astronomer thinks he is able to detect the various stages which connect the nebula in its original form with the final form. He is thus led to believe that each of the nebulae passes, in the course of ages, through these stages. And thus Herschel adopted the opinion that stars--some, many, or all--have each originated from what was once a glowing nebula.

Such a speculation may captivate the imagination, but it must be carefully distinguished from the truths of astronomy, properly so called. Remote posterity may perhaps obtain evidence on the subject which to us is inaccessible: our knowledge of nebulae is too recent. There has not yet been time enough to detect any appreciable changes: for the study of nebulae can only be said to date from Messier's Catalogue in 1771.

Since Herschel's time, no doubt, many careful drawings and observations of the nebulae have been obtained; but still the interval has been much too short, and the earlier observations are too imperfect, to enable any changes in the nebulae to be investigated with sufficient accuracy. If the human race lasts for very many centuries, and if our present observations are preserved during that time for comparison, then Herschel's theory may perhaps be satisfactorily tested.

A hundred years have passed since Laplace, with some diffidence, set forth his hypothesis as to the mode of formation of the solar system. On the whole it must be said that this "nebular hypothesis" has stood the test of advancing science well, though some slight modifications have become necessary in the light of more recent discoveries. Laplace (and Herschel also) seems to have considered a primitive nebula to consist of a "fiery mist" or glowing gas at a very high temperature. But this is by no means necessary, as we have seen that the gradual contraction of the vast mass supplies energy which may be converted into heat, and the spectroscopic evidence seems also to point to the existence of a moderate temperature in the gaseous nebulae, which must be considered to be representatives of the hypothetical primitive chaos out of which our sun and planets have been evolved. Another point which has been reconsidered is the formation of the various planets. It was formerly thought that the rotation of the original mass had by degrees caused a number of rings of different dimensions to be separated from the central part, the material of which rings in time collected into single planets. The ring of Saturn was held to be a proof of this process, since we here have a ring, the condensation of which into one or more satellites has somehow been arrested. But while it is not impossible that matter in the shape of rings may have been left behind during the contraction of the nebulous mass (indeed, the minor planets between Mars and Jupiter have perhaps originated in this way), it seems likely that the larger planets were formed from the agglomeration of matter at a point on the equator of the rotating nebula.

The actual steps of the process by which the primeval nebula became transformed into the solar system seem to lie beyond reach of discovery.


CHAPTER XXVII.


THE TIDES.[44]

Mathematical Astronomy--Lagrange's Theories: how far they are
really True--The Solar System not Made of Rigid Bodies--Kepler's
Laws True to Observation, but not Absolutely True when the Bodies
are not Rigid--The Errors of Observation--The