The evolution of worlds from nebulae

by Lee Parker Dean

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 98.

[15] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 101.

[16] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 99.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SUN’S LIGHT AND HEAT.

I conceive that one reason why scientists believe in the nebular hypothesis is because of their knowing that heat consumes. One cannot contemplate a burning object without perceiving that it grows smaller and smaller; therefore why should not the sun with its flaming hydrogen, rising sometimes to a height of 200,000 miles, consume the sun? It is claimed but ¹/₂₃₀₀ millionth of its force reaches earth, and yet it is asserted that the sun could melt 287,200,000 cubic miles of ice per second without quenching its heat.[17] From what we know appertaining to heat, how can we think it is otherwise than reducing the sun’s volume?

Yet we must remember there are other things as difficult of comprehension. We see the mist rising from the ocean and forming into clouds that drift through the heavens when moved by the winds, and we might well believe in future years the oceans will be drained of their contents. But when we learn that all those waters pass into the sky but to condense and fall to earth, and then through streams again reach the oceans, we can readily understand that they may be the same to-day as when created; nor conceive how it will be otherwise to the end of time.

Again, when a boiler of water seems wasting through invisible steam, expanded 1800 times its original bulk, we might well believe it is being destroyed only we have learned all that steam in some manner cools and forms again the first element H²O, not one particle being lost. When any body is burned and we see the flames ascending into the air, we say it is being destroyed, for so it seems; but chemists tell us the form alone is changed and the weight after burning identical with its first weight; showing thereby that not one particle of earth can either be formed or destroyed, but simply changed from combinations of molecules to simple molecules, or vice-versa.

We see earth everywhere surrounded by an atmospheric sea, not of oxygen and hydrogen, but of oxygen and nitrogen—four-fifths being nitrogen—and were the other fifth the same no life could exist in it. Scientists tell us this atmosphere extends from one to two hundred miles into the sky, but is densest at the earth’s surface; and as one ascends rapidly rarifies so that at a height of a few miles no life can exist. From what is known of winds and cyclones one might expect the atmosphere would be torn from earth, especially as earth moves at the rate of 1100 miles per minute, and revolves on its axis about the same number of miles per hour. One would suppose, at least, that which is highest and thinnest must be left behind in space; yet we cannot learn since Earth’s creation that any of it has been thus lost.