Planetary formation

“ Similarly the new studies of the earth's surface reveal secrets of planetary formation hitherto quite inscrutable. It becomes known that the strata of the earth's surface have been forming throughout untold ages, and that successive populations differing utterly from one another have peopled the earth in different geological epochs. ”

“ Nature is considered from other points of view, and the general course of nature is conceived in a manner wholly different from the beliefs of the past.
In a preceding study we have explained the general notion of planetary formation according to the views of the last century. The New Astronomy presents another theory. Beginning with virtually the same notion of the original condition of our world and sun cluster, the new view departs widely as to the processes by which the planets were formed, and extends much further with respect to the first condition and ultimate destiny of our earth. ”

“ A nucleus once formed would increase by appropriating matter from the zone which it traversed, and, though at first much retarded in its growth, it would after many thousand revolutions attain a planetary size. Being largely composed of gaseous matter and therefore very sensitive to the resistance of a space-pervading medium, the newly formed planet would contract its large orbit ”

“ And thus, according to our view, water and gases, clouds and vapors, form mainly the planets in the outer part of the solar system; while masses such as result from the fusion of the most solid materials, lie nearer the sun, and are found principally within the orbit of Jupiter. [2] To conceive planetary systems as formed by the gradual contraction of a nebular mass, and by the solidification of some of its parts, is a favorite notion of several speculators. ”

“ It would thus appear that many great luminous exhibitions would attend the awful paroxysms with which a large planet passes away from the stage of existence in a solar or in a secondary system. Though a small satellite, if fluid, may meet its final doom in an obscure manner, yet, if solid, it would be likely to maintain a planetary form until it came very close to the primary ”

“ Admitting, however, the hypothesis that these planetary bodies, are the remains of a larger body, which circulated round the sun, nearly in the orbit of the greatest fragment, the system resumes its order, and we discover a regular procession in the distances of the planets, and a general harmony in the form and position of their orbits. But, independently of analogical reasoning, the elements of the new planets furnish several direct arguments, drawn from the eccentricity and inclination of their orbits, and from the position of their perihelia and nodes ”

“ Yet, take all these planets and all their satellites, wonderful and great as they are, and consider them melted down into one great sphere, and still our sun alone, the center of this planetary system, is upwards of 750 times as large as all these planets combined would be! ”

“ If it were quite immaterial to the welfare of the planetary system whether all the planets moved the same way, or whether some moved one way and some another, then the nebular hypothesis would be entitled to all the support which could be derived from the circumstances of the case. Take, for instance, the eight principal planets—Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. All these planets move in the same way around the sun. ”

“ But if we admit that the substance of which the solar system consists once existed in a nebulous condition, and was in rotation, all the above peculiarities follow as necessary mechanical consequences. Nay, more, the formation of planets, the formation of satellites and of asteroids, is accounted for. We see why the outer planets and satellites are larger than the interior ones; why the larger planets rotate rapidly, and the small ones slowly; why of the satellites the outer planets have more, the inner fewer. ”

“ When, however, we bring thousands of years into consideration, then the displacements of the planetary orbits attain considerable dimensions, and have, in fact, produced a profound effect on the system. ”

“ It was a comparatively easy task to show how the diurnal rising and setting could be accounted for by the rotation of the earth. It was a much more difficult undertaking to demonstrate that the planetary movements, which Ptolemy had represented with so much success, could be completely explained by the supposition that each of those planets revolved uniformly round the sun, and that the earth was also a planet, accomplishing a complete circuit of the sun once in the course of a year. ”

“ But no matter what technique of world building obtains, gravity always produces the solar system type of creation; that is, a central sun or dark island with planets, satellites, subsatellites, and meteors.
The physical aspects of the individual worlds are largely determined by mode of origin, astronomical situation, and physical environment. Age, size, rate of revolution, and velocity through space are also determining factors. Both the gas-contraction and the solid-accretion worlds are characterized by mountains and, during their earlier life, when not too small, by water and air. ”

“ The scientific verification of this position must of necessity be founded on the terrestrial observation of phenomena. So far as the orbital movements of the planet are concerned these are admittedly orderly; each planetary mass wheels its flight through space with unvarying regularity; the energy processes, also, associated with the variations of planetary orbital path, and which attain limiting conditions at perihelion and aphelion, are readily acknowledged to be reversible and cyclical in nature. ”

“ It is very remarkable, that all this array of small bodies begins to be found just outside the Earth's orbit. Supposing, as we have found so much reason to suppose, that Jupiter, and the other exterior planets, are not solid bodies, but masses of water and of vapor; the existence of great solid planetary masses, such as exist in the region of the Earth's orbit, is succeeded externally by the existence of a vast number of smaller bodies. The real quantity of matter in these smaller bodies we cannot in general determine. ”

“ We can say only that there is strong evidence of its possession of the conditions of life in some degree, and that living things, even on the earth, display a remarkable power of adaptation to widely differing conditions.
Passing over the 700 planetoids, which circulate between Mars and Jupiter, and for which we may account either by the absence of one large nucleus in that part of the nebulous stream or by the disturbing influence of Jupiter, we come to the largest planet of the system. Here we find a surprising confirmation of the theory of planetary development which we are following. ”

“ There are numerous other techniques for evolving suns and segregating planets, but the foregoing procedures suggest the methods whereby the vast majority of stellar systems and planetary families are brought into existence. ”

“ Within the solar system there are planetary surfaces to be watched, asteroids to be scanned for variability or change of it, meteor swarms to be correlated with their sources, occultations to be minutely examined, and when one runs short of these, our nearest neighbor the Moon offers a wild and physically unknown country for exploration. It is suspected with good reason of dynamic changes, to say nothing of the possible last remnants of organic life. ”

“ The solution is—there are nine planets in this solar system! Neptune and Uranus are each far vaster than Earth; they are utterly impossible for life as we know it, but a small colony might be established there to refine metals for the distant Earth. We might be able to build domed and sealed cities. But first we could try the nearer planets—Mars, Venus, or some satellites such as our Moon. I certainly hope that this machine will make it possible. ”

“ The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation of bodies in space is still and at present in progress. We live at a time when many have been formed, and many are still forming. Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its perfection to consist in the formation of a series of planets, for there are mathematical reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun, which can, according to the laws of the system, exist. ”

“ In the smaller systems the largest outer planet sometimes draws to itself its neighboring worlds, while those planets near the sun begin their terminal plunge. With your solar system, such an end would mean that the four inner planets would be claimed by the sun, while the major planet, Jupiter, would be greatly enlarged by capturing the remaining worlds. ”

“ After, in this way, throwing off the first planet, the central sun continued to cool and grow smaller, until the increase in the rate of its rotation was again such as to permit its centrifugal force to form a second ring around its equator, which being left as the sun continued to contract, gave rise to another planet, or to Uranus, and so on until the four major planets and the four minor planets were born. ”

“ The great fleet returned to a changed Solar system. Sol was still at its center, but there were now ten planets, including two new ones that the sun had captured from Nigra in return for Pluto; and all the planets had shifted a bit in their orbits.
What the ultimate effect on the planets will be, we cannot say as yet. ”

“ That the terrestrial stage of planetary development is subsequent to the terraqueous one, and must of necessity succeed it if the latter ever exist on a body, follows from the loss of internal heat on the one hand and from the kinetic theory of gases on the other. ”

“ As, however, it may be urged that exceptional causes may have given other planets an equal advantage in the matter of air and water, we will briefly consider some of the other conditions which we have found to be essential in the case of the earth, but which it is almost impossible to conceive as existing, to the required extent, on any of the other planets of the solar system. ”

“ It may therefore be expected that the small planet will proceed much more rapidly in its evolution than the large one; we might, therefore, anticipate that Mars and his satellites have attained a more advanced stage of their history than is the case with the earth and her satellite. ”

“ It is well known that in consequence of the gravitation which pervades the solar system, each of the planets has its movements mainly subordinated to the attraction of the sun. But each of the planets attracts every other planet. In consequence of these attractions, the orbits of the planets are to some extent affected. The mutual actions of the planets present many problems of the highest interest, and, it should be added, of the greatest difficulty. ”

“ The conception of a primal nebular mist is not a necessary inference from astronomic phenomena; it is as easy and as logical to regard the various phases of planetary development revealed to us by the telescope as so many phases of an evolution and dissolution continually recurring in different parts of the universe, one extreme of which is represented by the nebular mist, the other by the cold and lifeless remains of planets gradually suffering dissolution as they revolve through space. ”

“ An extensive study of the outer solar system is recognized by us to be one of the major objectives of space science in this decade. This endeavor is made particularly exciting by the rare opportunity to explore several planets and satellites in one mission using long-lived spacecraft and existing propulsion systems. ”

“ A single moment's reflection upon the solar system will fully demonstrate the difficulties that have attended this subject; the principal planets are attracted by the sun, and the sun by the planets; the satellites are also attracted by their principal planets, and each planet attracts all the rest, and is attracted by them. All these actions and reactions vary according to the quantities of matter and the distances, and produce great inequalities and irregularities. ”

“ From studying the mechanics of the solar system, scientists have become reasonably certain that the earth and the other planets and their satellites all were formed in a common process in a relatively short period of time, geologically speaking. ”

“ The outer planets would cool off first, become inhabitable, and, as the sun contracted and they radiated their own heat, become refrigerated and left behind by the retreating sun. Of course the outer planets would move slowly; but as that portion of the sun which gave them their motion drew in toward the centre, keeping its absolute speed, and revolving in the lessening circles of a contracting body, it would give the faster motion necessary to be imparted to Earth, Mercury, and Vulcan. ”

“ So they've made artificial-gravity fields to give their ships the seeming mass of suns, and they've set them in close orbits around each other. They'll come spinning into this solar system. What will happen when objects with the mass of suns—artificial or otherwise—come riding through between our sun and its planets? ”

“ Our own solar system, composed as it is of many parts, of thousands of meteors and comets, of numbers of satellites and planets, all revolving around one common centre, also forms a complete and perfect mechanism in itself. For millions and millions of years this perfect mechanism has been harmoniously working together in all its parts, as it moves in all its unity through the realms of infinite space. ”

“ Thirteen major planets they counted as they searched the system with their powerful telectroscope, the outermost more than ten billion miles from the parent sun, while planet six, the one indicated by the world number, was at a distance of five hundred million miles, nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter is from ours, yet the giant sun, giving more than twenty-five times as much heat and light in the blue-white range, heated the planet to approximately the same temperature Earth enjoys. ”