The Evolution of Worlds From Nebulae
9781465684677
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
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.”
