EECENT COSMOGONIES 209 



In studying the depths of graze of colliding suns, it was 

 found that when the graze was greater than a third of the whole 

 mass, a kind of whirling coalescence must ensue. Such an event 

 was thought to have given rise to our own Solar System. In this 

 view the planets were pre-existing bodies revolving in any azi- 

 muths about one or both of the original colliding suns. These 

 were swung into a plane by the whirl following upon the impact. 

 The moons were pieces of cosmic dust captured by the planets 

 when rarer than they are at present * * *. 



There is a tendency for the light elements to be expelled 

 from old systems by the high speed to atoms. These tend to 

 congregate in positions of high potential, where matter is sparse. 

 Agencies were found that elevated dissipating energy, and others 

 that tended to disperse matter, until a complete mechanism dis- 

 closed itself. That rendered it possible that we exist in a cyclic 

 scheme of creation, in which there is no evidence of a beginning 

 or promise of an end, but a cosmic whole infinite and immortal * *. 



Long ago [p. 21] both Ritter and myself, by different modes 

 of treatment and different modes of statement of results, showed 

 that in a complete collision of similar gaseous suns, the new sun 

 would be only expanded to one- fourth the density ; that is to say, 

 the diameter of the new sun would be the sum of the two dia- 

 meters of the two similar colliding gaseous suns. I also worked 

 out the interesting result that all the colliding energy was exactly 

 turned into potential energy of expansion, in this way leaving the 

 new sun in possession of the same temperature as the old pair. 

 Moreover, the condition was one of gaseous equilibrium and 

 hence stable * * *. 



Then [p. 96] what possibly is the right explanation (of the 

 solar system) occurred to me, a suggestion that improves as more 

 and more study is bestowed upon it. It is a kind of combination 

 theory. The planets were captured by the revolving nebula, but 

 they were independent bodies revolving in any azimuth, about 

 one or both of the original bodies whose impact produced the 

 revolving solar nebula. Perhaps the four inner dense planets 

 belonged to one original body, and the four outer rarer ones be- 

 longed to the other. Further study showed that all might have 

 belonged to only one of the original bodies. We have had much 

 talk over it, and opinions are still divided * * *. 



This, then, is the state of our idea of the origin of the Solar 

 System, as far as we have got at present. We have not appre- 

 ciably altered the idea for thirty years * * *. 



