solid particles like the planetesimals; and that their central masses
present an oval form, which is what would result from the tidal
effects, as just described. We also remember that some of them, like
the Lord Rosse and the Andromeda nebulæ, are visually double, and in
these cases we might suppose that the two masses represent the
tide-burst suns that ventured into too close proximity. It may be
added that the authors of the theory do not insist upon the appulse of
two suns as the only way in which the planetesimals may have
originated, but it is the only supposition that has been worked out.

But serious questions remain. It needs, for instance, but a glance at
the Triangulum monster to convince the observer that it cannot be a
solar system which is being evolved there, but rather a swarm of
stars. Many of the detached masses are too vast to admit of the
supposition that they are to be transformed into planets, in our sense
of planets, and the distances of the stars which appear to have been
originally ejected from the focal masses are too great to allow us to
liken the assemblage that they form to a solar system. Then, too, no
nodes such as the hypothesis calls for are visible. Moreover, in most
of the spiral nebulæ the appearances favor the view that the
supposititious encountering suns have not separated and gone each
rejoicing on its way, after having inflicted the maximum possible
damage on its opponent, but that, on the contrary, they remain in
close association like two wrestlers who cannot escape from each
other's grasp. And this is exactly what the law of gravitation
demands; stars cannot approach one another with impunity, with regard
either to their physical make-up or their future independence of
movement. The theory undertakes to avoid this difficulty by assuming
that in the case of our system the approach of the foreign body to the
sun was not a close one -- just close enough to produce the tidal