Camille Flammarion

“ Young tells us, we know the semi-diameter of our globe at the equator within two hundred feet—while to go "around the world" is now a mere frolic; and all this knowledge is given to children in an hour's lesson. But how few appreciate the long struggle of the human intellect in arriving at these simple results! Let us hastily glance at the early efforts of the human mind in trying to find out what sort of thing this earth is, in its form, extent, and relation to the heavenly bodies that surround it. ”

“ But, after the moon, Mars is the best known to us of all the heavenly bodies. No other planet can compare with him. Jupiter, which is the largest, and Saturn the fullest of curious interest, are both far more important than Mars, and more easily observed in their ensemble, owing to their size; but they are enveloped with an atmosphere which is always laden with clouds, and hence we never see their face. Uranus and Neptune are only bright points. Mercury is almost always eclipsed, like a courtier, by the rays of the sun. Venus alone may compare with Mars ”

“ The earth is an element placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the middle of an egg; around it is the water, like the white surrounding the yolk; outside that is the air, like the membrane of the egg; and round all is the fire, which closes it in as the shell does. The earth, being thus in the centre, receives every weight upon itself; and, though by its nature it is cold and dry in its different parts, it acquires, accidentally, different qualities; for the portion which is exposed to the torrid action of the air is burned by the sun, and is uninhabitable ”

“ Thus, then, we behold, in space, millions of miles away, a planet very much like our own, and where all the elements of life exist, as they do here—water, air, heat, light, winds, clouds, rain, streams, valleys, mountains. To complete the resemblance, the seasons there are very much the same as here, the axis of rotation of Mars having an inclination of 27°, while that of the earth is 23°. The Martial day is forty minutes longer than the terrestrial. ”

“ In considering what a mighty change it is destined to undergo in the future, the question arises, How long has it worn the shape in which it is familiar to us, and how did it look ages ago? One hundred thousand years ago there were, as yet, in all probability, no human beings on the earth, and the antediluvian monsters were the only creatures that could then view the starry sky. ”

“ Those brilliant points which sparkle in the midnight sky, and which have, during so many ages, remained as mysteries in the imagination of our fathers, are therefore veritable suns, immense and mighty, governing, in the parts of space lighted by their splendor, systems different from that of which we form a part. The sky is no longer a gloomy desert ”

“ Let the imagination, that is not appalled by these immensities, strive to conceive of them. If it does not experience the "vertigo of the infinite," let it calmly contemplate these abysses, and realize the position of the earth and of man in presence of them. ”

“ The cube with its six equal faces appeared to Plato to be the most perfect of solids, and therefore most suitable for the earth, which was to stand in the centre of the universe.
How the earth is supported was ever a perplexing question among ignorant nations. Thus, in the opinion of the old Greenlanders, as handed down from antiquity, the earth is upheld by pillars, which are so consumed by time that they often crack, and, were it not that they are sustained by the incantations of the magicians, the earth would long since have broken down. ”

“ If the same physico-chemical conditions are present on Mars as on earth, why should they not produce the same effects there as here? On earth the smallest drop of water is peopled with myriads of animalcules, and earth and sea are filled with countless species of animals and plants; and it is not easy to conceive how, under similar conditions, another planet should be simply a vast and useless desert.—La Nature. ”

“ In place of diamonds blazing in an azure vault, the stars would be for them golden fires flaming in a field of scarlet; the white clouds suspended in this red sky, and the splendors of sunset, would produce effects not less admirable than those which we behold from our own globe. ”

“ I have calculated that it weighs about three times as much as our sun, that is, 900,000 times more than the earth. Its distance is 1,400,000 times the semi-diameter of the earth's orbit, that is, fifty-four trillions of leagues.
Astronomers, since the time of Kepler, agree in admitting that each of the countless suns that fill infinite space is the centre of a system analogous to the planetary system of which we form a part. Each of these suns that we see in the sky shows to us a luminous fireside around which other human families are gathered. ”

“ But, one objection is, that Venus revolves between the sun and us, so that, when she is nearest, her illuminated hemisphere is toward the sun, and we see only her dark hemisphere edged by a slight luminous crescent, or, rather, we do not see it at all. Hence it is that the surface of Venus is harder to observe than that of Mars, and hence, too, it is that Mars has the preeminence, and that in the sun's whole family he is the one with which we shall first gain acquaintance. ”

“ The unvarying aspect of the moon never exhibits the slightest cloud upon its surface, nor do the occultations of stars by its disk reveal even the slightest traces of an atmosphere. Contrariwise, the aspect of Mars is ever varying. White spots move about over its disk, very often modifying its apparent configuration. These spots can be nothing else but clouds. The white spots at its poles increase or diminish with the seasons, exactly like the circumpolar ice of earth, which, for an observer on Venus, would have the same aspect and the same variations as the polar spots of Mars have for us. ”

“ EACH of the stars which glitter in the depths of space is a voluminous and massive sun like that which gives light to our earth. Distance alone reduces them to the appearance of fixed points. If we could approach any one of them we should experience the same impression as in passing from Neptune to the sun; the star would increase in size as we should approach it; it would soon exhibit a circular disk and continue to increase its proportions until they would be as large as the sun ”

“ But, when men began to have experience of the sea by early navigation, the idea of a circular horizon always observed led to the notion that the ocean was bounded, and the whole earth came to be represented as contained in a circle, beneath which were roots reaching downward without end. ”

“ First, the earth's atmosphere must be clear at the point of observation; and, second, the atmosphere of Mars must be also free from clouds—for that planet, like the earth itself, is surrounded by an aerial atmosphere which from time to time is obscured by clouds just like our own. These clouds, as they spread themselves out over the continents and seas, form a white veil which either entirely or partially conceals from us the face of the planet. ”

“ Such are the dimensions actually measured in the general constitution of the universe. As yet we are only at the vestibule of the edifice, on the edge of the abyss of infinitude: and we shall never penetrate very far beyond. ”

“ The earth is, therefore, sustained by the power of God, creator of all things, supporting all things by the word of his power. If below the earth or outside of it anything existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God made the earth the base of the universe, and ordained that it should sustain itself by its own proper gravity."
Cosmas says that the earth, a sort of great square box circumscribed on all sides by high walls, is divided into three parts: first, the habitable earth, which occupies the middle; secondly, the ocean, which surrounds this on all sides ”

“ To meet this requirement Edrisi, an Arabian geographer of the eleventh century, broached the idea that the earth is like an egg, with one-half plunged in water. According to him, the known world forms only a single half of the egg, which floats in the great ocean like an egg in a basin. This notion got currency with artists and map-makers, and continued, it is said, as a mode of representing the earth for many centuries. ”

“ The most brilliant star of our sky, Sirius, is a sun whose volume, judging from its light, should be 2,600 times larger than that of our sun. Its distance is about 897,000 times thirty-seven millions, that is about thirty-three trillions of leagues. ”

“ The planets reflect the light they receive from the sun; on examining their spectra, we find the solar spectrum as though it had been reflected from a mirror. If we direct the spectroscope on Mars, we get, first of all, an image perfectly identical with that produced by the central star of our system. ”

“ But, at the same time, if a body moves in the direction of one of the neighboring stars, it begins immediately to receive its influence. The star nearest us is at a distance 210,000 times greater than that which separates the earth from the sun, or eight trillions of leagues; it is the star Alpha Centauri, a brilliant double star whose orbit and mass I have calculated. This mass is equal to the half of that of the sun; it happens that if one could travel from the sun to this star a point would be reached where the attraction of the two would neutralize each other ”

“ On Mars, as on earth, the sun is the supreme agent of motion and of life. Heat vaporizes the water of the seas, causing it to ascend into the atmosphere. This vapor assumes visible shape by the same processes which produce clouds here, i.e., by differences of temperature and of saturation. Winds arise in virtue of these same differences of temperature. We can observe the clouds on Mars as they are swept along by air-currents over the seas and continents, and several observers have, so to speak, photographed these meteoric variations. ”

“ As it is seen, this star is quite small by the side of Sirius, but still larger than Jupiter relatively to our sun. Is it an immense planet, totally opaque and shining only by reflection of the light of Sirius? This is not probable; it must still be self-luminous just as our own earth was during so many ages. It does not correspond exactly to the observed perturbations, a fact which
proves that the system of Sirius certainly contains other worlds yet unseen. ”

“ That hemisphere of the moon which faces us is better known than the earth itself; its vast desert plains have been surveyed to within a few acres; its mountains and craters have been measured to within a few yards; while on the earth's surface there are 30,000,000 square kilometres (sixty times the extent of France) , upon which the foot of man has never trod, which the eye of man has never seen. ”

“ The heavens are no longer motionless, nor can the constellations any longer be regarded as the symbol of the unchangeable. Take, for instance, Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, the first of the constellations to be observed and named. Who is there that has not taken that figure as the enduring symbol of the preestablished harmony, the unalterable duration of the firmament? Well, that ancient constellation will be destroyed. Each one of the stars which constitute it is endowed with a movement of its own. ”

“ Notwithstanding the countless millions of miles of space between them and us, making them appear to us only as luminous points, whereas they are as great as our own sun, and thousands and millions of times greater than the earth, still, by means of the telescope and computation, astronomers have been able to come at them, and to demonstrate that they are all moving in every possible direction. ”

“ On Mars the red coloration is constant; it is observed at all latitudes, and in winter no less than in summer. It varies only in proportion to the clearness of the atmospheres of Mars and the earth. Still this does not preclude the supposition that the Martial vegetation has its share in producing the red hue of the planet, though it be principally due to the color of the soil. The land cannot be all over bare of vegetation, like the sands of Sahara. ”

“ The apparent annual movement of a star, whose distance can be known, is performed altogether within this infinitesimal space. For an observer on the star that is nearest to us, this hair would conceal the whole space between the earth and the sun. ”

“ Such is every star in the heavens.
Each sun in space has its special sphere of attraction, a sphere which extends to the limit of neutralization by another. This attraction diminishes in the inverse ratio of the square of the distances, but never becomes absolutely nothing. At the distance of Neptune the solar attraction is 900 times less than at the distance of the earth. While the earth if it were stopped in its course would fall toward the sun 294 hundred-thousandths of a metre during the first second of time, Neptune would fall only 327 hundred-millionths of a metre in the same time. ”