Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
page 46 of 476 (09%)
page 46 of 476 (09%)
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indeed, be other variations as yet undetected. Still, these
differences throw no doubt on the essential truth of the theory as to the process of development of the celestial systems. Though there is much room for debate as to the details of the work there, the general truth of the theory is accepted by nearly all the students of the problem. A peculiar advantage of the nebular hypothesis is that it serves to account for the energy which appears as light and heat in the sun and the fixed stars, as well as that which still abides in the mass of our earth, and doubtless also in the other large planets. When the matter of which these spheres were composed was disseminated through the realms of space, it is supposed to have had no positive temperature, and to have been dark, realizing the conception which appears in the first chapter of Genesis, "without form, and void." With each stage of the falling in toward the solar centres what is called the "energy of position" of this original matter became converted into light and heat. To understand how this took place, the reader should consider certain simple yet noble generalizations of physics. We readily recognise the fact that when a hammer falls often on an anvil it heats itself and the metal on which it strikes. Those who have been able to observe the descent of meteoric stones from the heavens have remarked that when they came to the earth they were, on their surfaces at least, exceedingly hot. Any one may observe shining meteors now and then flashing in the sky. These are known commonly to be very small bits of matter, probably not larger than grains of sand, which, rushing into our atmosphere, are so heated by the friction which they encounter that they burn to a gas or vapour before they attain the earth. As we know that these particles come from the starry spaces, where the temperature is somewhere near 500° below 0° Fahr., it is |
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