74 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



even had they thought such accuracy essential; and, 

 Lastly, when it is remembered that the investigators were 

 expecting and wanting the fact to turn out a certain 

 way, he will see how very little dependence is to be 

 placed upon the result of the calculation. Yet even so, 

 it was decisively ascertained that the earth's present 

 day cannot be figured out as longer by so much as 

 1/100 of a second than the day Troy fell. Should we 

 take this maximum possibility as established, it would 

 mean that every succeeding 24 hours a given point on 

 the earth's surface comes within exactly a half inch of 

 reaching the mark of the day before. That is to say, 

 the braking effect of both tides would bear- a ratio to 

 the earth's momentum of 1/2 inch to 25,000 miles, or 

 of one to three billion. The result is still further d is-, 

 credited inasmuch as the computers left out of considera- 

 tion certain side factors the nature of which can be 

 stated but not defined, and probably still others of 

 whose existence we do not even know, but which, were 

 they known, might easily reverse so infinitesimal a 

 finding. 



Yet it is upon this frail point of fact, joined to the 

 two theories of Newton and Kant, that George Howard 

 Darwin has erected his now celebrated, theory of Tidal 

 Evolution, which, notwithstanding its very general ac- 

 ceptance, seems to me, for reasons presently to be givi-n, 

 a palpable error. Its conception is to be traced to the 

 door of the Nebular Hypothesis, whose influence appears 

 to permeate everything astronomical. 



Mr. Darwin knew the dubious character of the 

 finding reached by the computation just outlined, but 

 he was so positive of the soundness of Kant's theoretical 

 views that, throwing discretion to the winds, he decided 

 that what Kant reasoned out should' be true is true, 



