208 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



suns, in approaching one another, would be similar to that of an 

 ordinary errant comet. There would be mutual deflection and 

 mutual distortion, and it would be extremely improbable that 

 the suns should meet centre to centre. Much more frequently 

 there would be partial impact or grazing collision; therefore, the 

 problem to consider was, what would happen were a pair of 

 dead suns to graze? * * * The portion of each body actually in 

 the path of the other would be torn from the main portion, and 

 these torn-off portions would coalesce into a new or third body, 

 explosively hot and of surpassing brilliancy. 



The two diminished suns would pass on, each with a fiery 

 scar where it had been cut. Each would be set rotating, and each 

 would be like a policeman's lantern hung by a string and set 

 spinning. Each would present alternatively its bright and dark 

 face to any point on its equatorial plane. * * * 



Returning to the central body, which the two retreating torn 

 suns were leaving behind between them, one saw that, at the im- 

 pact, the different elements would be given a temperature that 

 would be proportional to their atomic weight. Oxygen would be 

 1 6 times as hot as hydrogen, lead 207 times as hot as hydrogen, 

 each and every one of these elements moving at velocities of 

 hundreds of miles a second, yet all would be tending toward an 

 equality of temperature, as, for example, the hot lead would be 

 robbed of its high temperature by the cooler hydrogen. Then 

 when something like a balance or equality was gained, the energy 

 of unit mass of each element would tend to be inversely as its 

 atomic weight, hydrogen having 4 times the power of escape of 

 helium, 16 times that of oxygen, and 207 times that of lead. 



Their velocities would tend to follow the law of Graham, and 

 a kind of atom-sorting would ensue, to which the term "Mole- 

 cular Selective Escape" was applied. This atom-sorting tells us 

 that the new-born star would soon consist of a brilliant nucleus 

 of heavy elements, surrounded with a set of ensphering shells of 

 different gases ; the lightest, hydrogen, being on the outside. * * * 



The dense nucleus would be rotating, hence the outward 

 rush would not finish with the particles coming to rest ; the motion 

 would end in a curve, and all that mass of heavy elements would 

 form a revolving meteoric swarm, which, if the colliding bodies 

 were small, would be a comet. If, on the other hand, it were very 

 large, the swarm might develop into a star cluster, which in turn 

 might become a sun surrounded with countless satellites, a nebu- 

 lous star. Soon after impact the swarms might become entangled 

 with the variable stars, and might produce the nebulosity at mini- 

 mum, so characteristic of these bodies * * *. This new third 

 body would exercise a retarding influence on the two escaping 

 torn suns, and ought often to wed them into stars. * * * 



