134 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE 



[April 2, 1888. 



METEOR BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE. 



SOMEWHAT siu-prisiug communication (see 

 the last i)ai'agrapb of this article) has been 

 recently addressed by Mr. J. N. Lockyer to 

 the Eoyal Society on the subject of the 

 probable origin of the universe from meteoric 

 aggregation. A brief account of the history 

 of this theory from its inception to the 

 present time may serve at once to interest reader.s and to 

 show in what respect the latest communication on the subject 

 is chieiiy remarkable. 



In 18-iS, long before the knowledge respecting meteors 

 had been obtained which has recently thrown such interest- 

 ing light on their importance in the universe, Dr. Mayer, of 

 Heilbronn, enunciated the theory that the sun's heat is due 

 to the constant indraught of meteoric matter upon the ruling 

 centre of the solar system. This theory involved implicitly 

 the theory that, besides our own sun, all his fellow-suns, the 

 stars, owe their light and heat to meteoric aggregation. 

 Nay, it had to be extended still more widely to include such 

 heat as once pervaded the frames of all the members of the 

 solar system — giant planets, terrestrial planets, aerolites, and 

 satellites — as well as the heat which in like manner per- 

 vaded, millions of years ago, the masses of all the orbs 

 circling in system around all the thousands of millions of 

 suns constituting our galaxy. While, also, beyond our own 

 sidereal .sj'stem all the other similar systems which doubtless 

 pervade the infinitudes of space must presumalily (if Mayer's 

 theory were accepted) owe their light and heat — in other 

 words, their life — to meteoric collisions. 



Mayer's theory has not secured acceptance in its original 

 form. Supported for a while by Sir W. Thom.son, Mr. 

 Joule, and other leading mathematicians and physicists, it 

 was rejected by asti'onomers, who knew from the motions 

 of the planets that there is not a sufficiency of ungathered 

 material within the solar system to account for more than 

 ten years' emission of solar heat. \^et in another form the 

 theory has been accepted as affording practically the only 

 feasible explanation of the sun's heat. We now regard the 

 heat of the great central luminary as almost wholly due to 

 the action of gravity on the component materials of the 

 sun's mass, tliat heat being in technical terms the thermal 

 equivalent of the mechanical energy expended in the process 

 of solar contraction. Grant only that the sun's whole mass 

 was produced by a process of meteoric aggregation, and we 

 perceive that this theory of the origin of solar — and there- 

 fore of stellar and planetary — heat is simply a development 

 of Dr. Maj'er's meteoric theory. 



Recognising this, I could not advance as original the 

 theory which I have presented and discussed in the chapter 

 on " Comets and Meteors " in my " Other Worlds than 

 Ours," though much of the evidence was considered there 

 for the first time, and details of the theory as I advanced it 

 were entirely original. I there showed that, whereas the 

 nebular theory of Laplace (which was advanced by that 

 great mathematician merely as a hypothesis) affords no 

 explanation whatever of the strange way in which the masses 

 of the solar .system are distributed, the theory of meteoric 

 aggregation gives a very fair account of all the leading 

 features of the system, from the surpassing mass of Jupiter 

 to the insignificant combined mass of the thousands of 

 small planets which travel in a zone next within the orbit 

 of the chief giant of the solar system. 



But in the meantime, as also since 1870, when my own 

 first discussion of the meteoric theory of the birth of our 

 solar system appeared, discoveries most interesting and 

 important in character had been and have been in jirogie.ss. 

 Some of these I have myself discussed at length in these 



columns ; and even if I had not I could not find space to 

 discuss them here. Let it suffice to mention the leading 

 names and the discoveries of chief inteiest. In America 

 Professor Newton, of Yale College, called special attention 

 to the significance of the periodicity of the November 

 meteors ; and through his researches, combined with those 

 of Schiaparelli, Adams, Alexander Herschel, and many 

 others, it has been established that meteor systems play an 

 altogether more important part in the economy of the solar 

 system than bad formerly been imagined. The connection 

 between falling-stars, meteors, fire-balls, and aei'olites was 

 also satisfactorily demonstrated, a discovery by which the 

 importance of these various orders of bodies in the 

 universe, considered alike with reference to space and to 

 time, was still further indicated. The microscopical studies 

 of Sorby, the English mineralogist, and the chemical studies 

 of Graham, the chemist, showed the structure of meteorites 

 to be akin to what we must regard as the probable structure 

 of the material forming the sun's mass. M. Stanislas 

 Meunier and Daubree in France indicated at once the 

 varieties of structure, microscopical, chemical, and physical, 

 existing among meteorites, and the identity of each one of 

 these varieties with some variety recognised among terres- 

 trial materials, especially among materials found deep 

 within the crust of the earth. As the oneness of structure 

 existing within the solar system, and indeed within the 

 universe itself, has long ago been recognised, we may 

 regard these researches and the kindred researches of 

 Dewar, Tschermak, and others, as comprising the general 

 theory that all the discrete masses in the universe, from the 

 largest suns to the smallest satellite, are products of meteoric 

 aggregation. 



A very important part of the evidence in favour of the 

 theory that all the orbs in the universe were thus formed 

 has always been recogni.sed in the variety of character 

 recognised in the stars as analysed with the spectroscope. 

 Rutherfurd in this country, Secchi, Miller, Huggins, and 

 Vogel in Europe, have shown that the stars maybe arranged 

 in classes, indicating varieties of temperature ranging from 

 heat producing only the faintest luminosity to the trans- 

 cendent heat of the giant suns whose whole masses seem 

 vaporised, if even (as Professor Clarke, of Cincinnati, 

 suggested) the very elements, as we consider them, are not 

 dissociated into the true elements of which they are in 

 reality compounded. This, of course, is what we should 

 expect to follow from the immense range of variety in 

 regard to mass existing in the universe of suns. If these 

 orbs owe their heat to the combined processes of meteoric 

 aggregation and contraction, it must necessarily follow that 

 the larger masses will be the hotter, not only as pervaded 

 primarily by a more intense heat, but as parting more slowly 

 with their heat than smaller masses. (They would give 

 out more heat absolutely, moment by moment, but less 

 relatively to the totality of heat pervading their orbs.) 



Thus the theory of meteoric aggregation as suggesting 

 the true method of cosmogonic evolution has long had a 

 great mass of evidence, very varied in character, in its 

 favour. On the other hand, it is open to none of those 

 physical objections which oppose themselves persistently 

 and with overwhelming weight against the nebular theory 

 of Laplace. It requires us to believe in no such unthink- 

 able impos.sibility as a vast disc of infinitely tenuous vapour 

 presenting all the characteristics of a practically infinite 

 rigidity. This indeed is the merest beginning of the 

 difficulties besetting Laplace's hypothesis — difficulties not 

 recognisable in his day, though he seems to have felt some- 

 thing of their force when he remarked that he presented 

 the hypothesis "avec la defiance que doit inspirer tout ce 

 qui n'est point un resultat de I'observation ou du calcul." 



