124 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



somewhat after this fashion. Here are two large ' ' ob- 

 jects " falling together through a vacuum. They must 

 therefore fall with precisely the same velocity, preserve 

 throughout their respective initial inclinations and 

 shapes, retain their separate individualities, and, finally, 

 strike the earth one after the other. Or, as Ganot puts it, 

 " Everything else being the same, all bodies, great and 

 small, light and heavy, ought to fall with equal rapidity, 

 and a lump of sand without cohesion should, during its 

 fall, retain its original form as perfectly as if it were 

 compact stone. ' ' 



Such, I say, is the solution tendered us by Newton 

 and his disciples. Let me now submit my own : Although 

 it is quite true that each of the two moons is only 1/81 as 

 massive as our planet, they are, on the other hand, eighty 

 times nearer each other than their common center of 

 gravity is to the earth. Let it be remembered, however, 

 that attraction varies directly as the mass, but inversely 

 as the square of the separating distance, whence it 

 plainly follows that the net attraction between the moons 

 is eighty times greater than that between their joint mass 

 and the earth. This condition would result in a singular 

 thing, namely: The aqueous ball, being solicited moon- 

 ward far more powerfully than earthward, it would, for a 

 time, actually rise away from the earth until it should 

 meet the true moon on her way down. The impact of 

 such a meeting would, of course, per se, deform both col- 

 liding bodies ; but this would not be the sole result. The 

 integral power of attraction of the coalescing mass would 

 immediately come into play a constructive, as the col- 

 lision was a destructive force and this would auto- 

 matically remould the whole into a globular form, in 

 which new state the merged moons, continuing their 

 descent, would strike the planet as one. 



Which of these analyses does the reader prefer, the 

 first based on the denial of the law of equilibrium, or the 

 second, founded on the laiv itself? 



To sum up, then, it plainly appears : First, that the 

 unanimous admission of our modern scientists is, that 

 Newton's theory of tides is completely contradicted by 



