Stellar Evolution and Its Relations to Geological Time

by James Croll

From what has been stated it would follow that in most cases the stellar masses have been formed out of the destruction of pre-existing masses, like the geological formations out of the destruction of prior formations.

The theories do not account for the motion of the stars.—According to all the foregoing theories aggregation and condensation are produced by gravity. The materials dispersed throughout space are drawn together by their mutual attraction, and aggregated round a centre of gravity. Gravitation, although it imparts motion to the materials, can impart no motion of translation to the mass itself. Gravitation cannot, therefore, be the cause of the motion of translation of the mass. The stars are not supposed to be gravitating towards, or around, a great centre of attraction, for they are found moving in straight lines in all directions, which could not be the case if gravity were the cause of their motion. To what cause is their motion, therefore, to be attributed? A meteorite or other small body might be ejected from any system, by the explosive force of heat or some other cause, with a velocity which might carry it into boundless space; but such could not be the case in regard to a body of the magnitude of a star. No one for a moment could suppose that 1830 Groombridge, for example, moving at the rate of 200 miles a second, is an eject from any system.

According to the impact theory the whole is plain; for this 200 miles per second is simply a part of the untransformed motion of translation which the materials composing the star had from the beginning. In other words, the matter and the motion were eternal, or, what is more probable, as will afterwards be seen, co-existed from creation—not, however, as molecular motion, but as motion of the mass.

The theories do not account for the amount of heat required.—It has been shown that, although the materials of our solar system had fallen together from an infinite distance, it could not have generated heat sufficient to have formed a gaseous nebula extending to the distance of the planet Neptune. Gravitation alone could not, therefore, have been the source from which the nebula obtained its heat. The solar nebula, however, must originally have extended far beyond the orbit of Neptune.

But supposing it could be demonstrated that the heat thus generated was sufficient to have formed a nebula extending to even twice the distance of Neptune, this would not remove the fatal objection to the gravitation theory of the origin of the solar nebula. For the facts, both of geology and of biology, equally show that the sun has been radiating his heat at the present rate for more than twice the length of time that it could possibly have done had gravitation been the source from which the energy was derived. This objection is alike fatal to the meteoric theory as it is to all other theories which attribute the origin and source of the heat to gravitation.

Evolution of matter.—Our inquiries into stellar evolution do not, however, begin with the consideration of a gaseous nebula, or with swarms of meteorites. There was a pre-nebular evolution. The researches of Prout, Newlands, Mendelejeff, Meyer, Dumas, Clarke, Lockyer, Crookes, Brodie, Hunt, Graham, Deville, Berthelot, Stoney, Reynolds, Carnelley, Mills, and others, clearly show, I think, that the very matter forming this nebulous mass passed through a long anterior process of evolution. And not only the matter, but the very elements themselves constituting the matter, were evolved out of some prior condition of substance.

I have already given at some length the views which have been advanced by several of our leading physicists and chemists on the evolution of the chemical elements, and on some of the bearings which these views have on stellar evolution. I shall now briefly refer to a point on which I venture to think the theory discussed in this volume seems to cast some additional light.

If the elements were evolved out of a common source, there is, in order to this, one necessary condition, viz. an excessively high temperature; for the temperature must be above the point of the dissociation of all the chemical elements. “In the primal stage of the universe,” says Mr. Crookes, “before matter, as we now find it, was formed from the protyle, all was in an ultra-gaseous state, at a temperature inconceivably hotter than anything now existing in the visible universe; so high, indeed, that the chemical atoms could not yet have been formed, being still far above their dissociation point.”

What, then, produced this excessive temperature in this supposed ultra-gaseous protyle? It could not have resulted from condensation by gravity. In condensation the heat increases as the condensation proceeds, because it is the condensation which produces the heat. But here the reverse must have been the case, for the ultra-gaseous mass was much hotter than the sun which was afterwards formed out of it. It was, according to Mr. Crookes, when this gaseous mass cooled down, so as to permit of its becoming converted into solid matter, that condensation into a sun could take place. Besides, was it not the excessive heat which produced the assumed ultra-gaseous condition?

There is another difficulty besetting the theory that the primitive heat was derived from condensation by gravitation. Supposing we should assume it possible that the protyle could exist in this ultra-gaseous state without possessing temperature, and that it obtained its heat from condensation by gravity, then the fact of condensation taking place shows that the gas was not in a state of equilibrium. But the gas could not have remained stationary for a single moment without beginning to condense while in a condition of unstable equilibrium. We must therefore conclude that the gas must have been in some other condition than the gaseous state prior to condensation.