432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



very greatly extended. Hence, considering the extreme slowness of the 

 process, it may be reasonable to conclude that the forms ultimately 

 developed would be identical with those which would be assumed by 

 liquid masses having the same relative positions and velocities. 



The determination of these forms is a problem for the mathema- 

 ticians. In the absence of analysis, no reason is manifest for sup- 

 posing that the forms of equilibrium would be materially different 

 just before and just after contact. May it not be that the order of 

 change would be a partial reversal of certain supposed processes of 

 the nebular hypothesis ? Thus the moon may be gradually elongated 

 into a closed ring which will slowly contract upon the earth as the 

 energy of angular velocity is gradually dissipated by the friction of 

 the medium. In any event there seems to be no good reason to sup- 

 pose that there will be such a sudden leap in the final osculation or 

 embrace as would result in a catastrophe. 



The same considerations apply to the gravitational relations be- 

 tween planets and suns. Other very important relations between 

 these bodies, however, with which organic life is more especially con- 

 cerned, require attention. One fundamental requisite to all known 

 terrestrial organic life is the conversion, within living bodies, of 

 molecular energy, either into molar motions, or into potential energy 

 which may afterward be thus converted. All living animals and 

 plants, therefore, depend for their existence upon the passage through 

 their bodies, in the movement toward distribution and equalization, 

 of heat, light, and other molecular forces originating in the sun. 



The integrity of cosmical evolution in relation to organic life, 

 accordingly, seems to require the maintenance of great central 

 laboratories where molecular disturbances of sufficient intensity and 

 quantity can be continually generated, and their effects distributed 

 throughout the universe. Not withstanding the enormous expenditure 

 of heat by the sun, its temperature is supposed to have been main- 

 tained about the same as at present for a very long period of time in 

 the past, and no reason is manifest why this fixed temperature will 

 not continue for a very long time in the future. Doubtless, opera- 

 tions are going on in the sun which it would be impossible to imi- 

 tate in terrestrial laboratories. May it not be that the conditions 

 of materials and the circumstances of pressure, chemical affinity, 

 etc., are such, that substances more elementary than our so-called 

 chemical elements are uniting with an energy far exceeding that of 

 any chemical combination we can effect, and so prodigious as to 

 maintain, at comparatively small expenditure of material, the sun's 

 temperature at that enormous degree which marks the dissociation 

 point of the tremendously energetic combination ? The duration of 

 the combination or combustion would thus be prolonged to an enor- 

 mously remote period. At last, when all the potential energy due to 

 this particular reaction became exhausted by the combination of all 



