Jules Verne

“ The captain could not help himself: he was forced to confess that his memory had failed him.
“Well, then,” said the professor, “I must remind you. Taking the attraction on the earth as 1, that on Mercury is 1.15; on Venus it is .92, on Mars .5, and on Jupiter 2.45; on the moon the attraction is .16, whilst on the surface of the sun a terrestial kilogramme would weigh 28 kilogrammes.”
“Therefore, if a man upon the surface of the sun were to fall down, he would have considerable difficulty in getting up again. ”

“ What crowds must be flocking to the churches! The end of the world approaching! the great climax close at hand! Two days more, and the earth, shivered into a myriad atoms, would be lost in boundless space! ”

“ Why, that the density of Gallia is just about double the density of the earth, which we know is only five kilogrammes to a cubic decimetre. Had it not been for this greater density, the attraction of Gallia would only have been one-fifteenth instead of one-seventh of the terrestrial attraction. ”

“ The orbits of Venus and Mercury are within the orbit of the earth, Venus rotating at an average distance of 66,130,000 miles from the sun, and Mercury at that of 35,393,000. After pondering long, and as profoundly as he could, upon these figures, Captain Servadac came to the conclusion that, as the earth was now receiving about double the amount of light and heat that it had been receiving before the catastrophe, it was receiving about the same as the planet Venus ”

“ The professor frowned and looked angry, but the captain diverted him by making a remark about the diminished force of gravity.
“Yes,” said Rosette; “our muscular force is seven times as great as it was. A man who used to be able to carry a couple of hundred-weight can here carry fourteen.”
“I suppose that accounts for our being able to jump so high,” observed Ben Zoof.
“And if Gallia had been lighter, Ben Zoof, you would have been able to jump higher still,” the lieutenant said. ”

“ No attempt had been made to rebuild the gourbi, but the captain and Ben Zoof managed to make up quarters sufficiently comfortable in the principal apartment of the adjoining structure, where the stone walls, that at first afforded a refuge from the torrents of rain, now formed an equally acceptable shelter from the burning sun. The heat was becoming insufferable, surpassing the heat of Senegal and other equatorial regions; not a cloud ever tempered the intensity of the solar rays ”

“ Since a cubic decimetre of the hard substance of Gallia would weigh ten kilogrammes upon the earth, Gallia would weigh as many times ten kilogrammes as there were cubic decimetres in its volume. This volume was already known to be 211,432,460 cubic kilometres (i.e. 47,880,000 cubic miles) or 211,432,460 millions of millions of cubic decimetres—a number expressed by 21 digits—and these would represent the number of kilogrammes in the mass of Gallia, which consequently weighed 4,788,566,540 millions of millions of kilogrammes less than the earth. ”

“ One day, just after he had been alluding to this as his usual habit, a young man entered the room, and feeling sure the lecturer knew him well, saluted him accordingly. “I regret, I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance,” said M. Arago. “Then surprise me,” replied the young student: “not only am I most regular in my attendance at your lectures, but you never take your eyes off me from the beginning to the end.”
5↑ The earth's weight is estimated at 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. ”

“ A lath was then cut of this exact length and given to the engineer of the Dobryna, who was directed to cut out of the solid rock the cubic decimetre required by the professor.
The next business was to obtain the precise weight of a kilogramme. This was by no means a difficult matter. Not only the diameters, but also the weights, of the French coins are rigidly determined by law, and as the silver five-franc pieces always weigh exactly twenty-five grammes, the united weight of forty of these coins is known to amount to one kilogramme. [3]
“Oh!” cried Ben Zoof ”