The Romance of the Heavens (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I PARTIAL IMPACT CELESTIAL PHENOMENA ? VARIATION OF SPLENDOUR ? INSIGNIFICANT SIZE OF THE EARTH. CELESTIAL EVOLUTION SUGGESTED?A THEORY BLENDING PHILOSOPHY WITH SCIENCE?OTHER THEORIES UNSATISFACTORY. COMPREHENSIVE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY. ASTRO-PHYSICS?HEAT A MODE OF MOTION?ITS TWO KINDS ?RADIANT ENERGY?THEORY OF HEAT AND MATTER?CONVERSION OF MOTION OF MASS INTO HEAT? HEAT RESULTS FROM IMPACTS?HIGH TEMPERATURES AND HIGH VELOCITIES-CRITICAL VELOCITIES. POSSIBILITIES OF STELLAR COLLISION ? DIRECT COLLISIONS IMPROBABLE. THREE PHENOMENA ASSOCIATED WITH PARTIAL IMPACT?A THIRD KODY FORMED ? HIGH TEMPERATURE EVOLVED ? INSTABILITY OF THE NEW BODY. INTRODUCTORY. The phenomena of the heavens have ever been matters of interest to historic man, and doubtless his pre-historic ancestors also pondered over these mysteries. They could not fail to note the rising and setting of the sun the moon, and the stars; nor could they help observing the phases of the moon and herperiodic change of place with regard to the sun, and the similarity of her phases with her similar relative positions. They would detect that the winter aspect of stellar distribution differed from its summer aspect. The splendid genius of the paleolithic artist, who, as proved by the remnants of the past, could sketch with such spirited fidelity the giant elk and hairy elephant, would have forced upon his trained eye the permanency of the pattern in the stars of the celestial vault, and amidst that permanency he would detect the planets by their erratic movements. As he noticed the permanence of the varied glory of the stars, he would perceive in those wandering lights not merely difference in splendour, but that this splendour also varied periodically as did their place amongst the stars. The observant eye of t...