GRAVISTATIC HEAT 67 



and the result will be his dissolution by explosion back 

 into a nebula. This* is tlie final fate of all stars, but 

 it is the salvation of tJie universe. As with human life, 

 the old must die to make room for the young. Mani- 

 festly the destruction of a star terminates instantly its 

 concentered attraction, and so relieves the congestion 

 at that particular point; but as a nebula it still retains 

 its intrinsic- gravity, and so does not derange the uni- 

 verse as a whole. This, in my opinion, is the real ex- 

 planation of new stars, like Nova Persei, that are once 

 or twice in a century seen to explode and shower their 

 substance out into space with a velocity even greater 

 than that of light itself. Correspondingly, all nebulae 

 are the ghosts of deceased stars, and help us by their 

 multitudiuosity to a comprehension of what eternity 

 really means. Of course such explosions need not nec- 

 essarily be total; many in fact are only slight. 



There arc 1 , in my opinion, no nebulae, nor can there 

 be any, which do not owe their origin to just such 

 explosions, or to collisions. To me the universe is 

 eternal, or at least so old that all the matter therein 

 contained seems to have passed through the gamut of 

 changes, nebula, planet, star, nebula, over and over 

 again. 



FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA, so runs the life history 

 of a world and so does every particle of matter. As long 

 as matter possesses the properties it does now, the cycle 

 must go on eternally without change or hitch, save such 

 as are normal and incidental to it. 



When a star explodes, its fragments, some large, 

 others minute, fly radially in all directions, and the 

 former's power of recall (attraction) being incidentally 

 dispelled, the fragments enter adjoining systems at high 

 relocities and with projectile, as distinguished from 



