48 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



at.trat tive, bore upon its face such gross absurdities as 

 should have condemned it on sight. Even had it pro- 

 visionally solved all the details it was intended to do, 

 its palpable and inherent defects should have discred- 

 ited it nevertheless, and such apparent responsiveness 

 been laid to the credit of mere coincidence. As it has 

 turned out, science has frittered away a century in put- 

 ting this fanciful wraith of a nebula, through a series 

 of imaginary gymnastics, only to have it perversely turn 

 and twist the wrong way like a double- join ted harle- 

 quin. In its application to details the Hypothesis has 

 been found consistently disappointing. 



From Laplace down to Mayer and Joule, scientists 

 peacefully believed in the possibility of this nebula be- 

 ing superheated, but no sooner did the Mechanical The- 

 ory of Heat appear than they confessed their previously 

 concealed misgivings and welcomed the newcomer with 

 open arms. With a great sigh of relief they iinprovi- 

 dently cooled with its breeze the nebula's imaginary 

 incandescence down to the zero of space, and began to 

 build with the chilled embers the burning sun and 

 molten worlds. New phrases, such as "kinetic energy," 

 "energy of position," etc., sprang up, which, interpre- 

 ted, mean that by the mere coming together of the par- 

 ticles of the nebula under the constraining influence of 

 gravity, heat was produced by their mechanical impacts 

 sufficient to melt the substance of the forming planets, 

 and to endow the sun with a suppty of caloric capable 

 of lasting that prodigal ten thousand, thousand years. 

 Thus science rested in smug content until Helmholtz, 

 the great physicist, fortified the theory with his idea 

 of a slowly contracting sun, so that certain sleepers 

 who had given some signs of waking were lulled into 

 still deeper slumber. 



