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Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries by Garrett P. (Garrett Putman) Serviss
page 92 of 191 (48%)
impossible to determine it, owing to the great number of these bodies
and our ignorance of their masses."[7]

[Footnote 7: Popular Astronomy, by Simon Newcomb, p. 335.]

Yet the theory has never been entirely thrown out, and now that the
discovery of the light fluctuations of Eros lends support to Olbers's
assertion of the irregular shape of some of the asteroids, it is very
interesting to recall what so high an authority as Professor Young said
on the subject before the discovery of Eros:

"It is true, as has often been urged, that this theory in its original
form, as presented by Olbers, can not be correct. No _single_ explosion
of a planet could give rise to the present assemblage of orbits, nor is
it possible that even the perturbations of Jupiter could have converted
a set of orbits originally all crossing at one point (the point of
explosion) into the present tangle. The smaller orbits are so small
that, however turned about, they lie wholly inside the larger and can
not be made to intersect them. If, however, we admit a _series_ of
explosions, this difficulty is removed; and if we grant an explosion at
all, there seems to be nothing improbable in the hypothesis that the
fragments formed by the bursting of the parent mass would carry away
within themselves the same forces and reactions which caused the
original bursting, so that they themselves would be likely enough to
explode at some time in their later history."[8]

[Footnote 8: General Astronomy, by Charles A. Young. Revised edition,
1898, p. 372.]

The rival theory of the origin of the asteroids is that which assumes
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