The centripetal force of the rings was gradually retarded by the influence of the moon, and the gravital force was increased until the rings spread over the earth or approached it. When the innermost ring gradually descended toward the earth and came in contact with the air it was checked, and necessarily spread out toward the poles. Gravital force is strongest in the polar regions. If the rings of Saturn and Jupiter could increase their motion they would rise to greater heights. If they could become slower they would sink toward the poles.
EVIDENCE FROM OTHER PLANETS.
We have never seen the actual face of Saturn, and the sun is never visible to its inhabitants. It is a planet upon which there is probably perpetual day. The belts are composed of the same kind of material as the super-crust of the earth—silicious, calcareous and carbonaceous matter. They will in time become a part of the planet’s sedimentary formation.
When the inveterate fires of the sun shall have died out, forms of carbon and associated forms of aqueous and mineral matter will form an annular system around it.
A burning world must be a smoking world, and from its furnaces must arise vast volumes of unconsumed carbon to mingle with suspended vapors.
When Saturn’s rings fall to the body of the planet its moons will necessarily retire a little farther from it. Astronomers say that our moon is gradually retiring from the earth. Then it must have had an annular system which fell and caused the moon to recede.
FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD.
The vapors contained silex, quartz and whatever else was vaporized and suspended therein. After the atmosphere had cooled it deposited on the earth what it contained when heated. Much of the sedimentary beds built upon the Laurentian and older rocks were simply precipitated from the annular system.
Iron and sulphur existed in the upper ocean as metallic and mineral salts. In the cooling process the heavier minerals and metals would necessarily locate nearest the earth and be the first to fall. True they were disseminated to a certain extent throughout the system.
Iron and other heavy metals formed beds in the sea bottom. Iron from Iron Mountain, Mo., and Pilot Knob, also lead and copper ores are in the Laurentian rocks. These rocks are aqueous or sedimentary. The annular matter fell but in small part in equatorial regions, but largely in temperate and frigid zones.