KECENT COSMOGONIES 245 



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. * * * 



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 



