332 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



any hollow space throughout the planet's globe, is altogether in- 

 consistent with what is known of the constitution of even the 

 strongest materials. * * * The effect of pressure in rendering iron 

 and other metals plastic has been experimentally determined. 

 Cast steel has been made to flow almost like water under pressure. 



You may perhaps wonder whether Mr. Proctor, who 

 penned these statements a half century ago, may not have 

 been premature in the making of them, and that later re- 

 searches (during the greatest investigating age of all 

 time) may have contradicted him. No, he was not mis- 

 taken, nor does contemporary science throw the slight- 

 est cloud of doubt upon either the facts or the inferences 

 as lie gives them. Just as Jupiter was then he still is, 

 and such he has been, according to present scientific opin- 

 ion, for as long, or even longer, than the age of the earth 

 say a thousand million of years. Why is he still so 

 hot after a million times as long as (according to the 

 orthodoxical Newcomb), had he been an "ordinary" 

 body, should have been sufficient to cool him down from a 

 solar temperature to a condition such as the moon is in 

 to-day! Jupiter is more than five times as far from the 

 sun as our earth is, consequently he receives only 1-27 as 

 much solar heat, area for area, and the ether that sur- 

 rounds him is colder than liquid air. Why, I insist again, 

 is he still hot, even to glowing? Shall we follow the ex- 

 ample of the Conservationists and lazily sit down and 

 wait for the planet to cool, or shall we not rather seek 

 explanation for the phenomenon in routine natural pro- 

 cesses? 



By actual experiment physicists have demonstrated 

 again and again that the metal, lead, can be liquefied in 

 the hydraulic press. They interpret this phenomenon in 

 the light of their doctrine of conservation as signifying 

 that in its molten state the metal returns just as many 

 units of heat, and no more, as the mechanical energy de- 

 voted to its compression. In their haste and obsession 

 it seems never to have occurred to any of the experi- 

 menters to watch and wait to see whether the lead will 

 cool down completely to the temperature of the surround- 



