Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
This being so, it might have been supposed that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or nebulae, such was the distance. But that did not follow: for in the treasury of nature it turned out that there were other resources for modifying the powers of distance, for muffling and unmuffling the voice of stars.
The Portuguese have gone beyond the fifty-fifth degree of the other Pole, where, in sailing about the point, they could see throughout the heavenly vault certain nebulae, similar to the Milky Way, in which rays of light shone.
By them we now study the composition of the atmospheres of the other planets; through them the presence of chemical elements known on the earth is detected in vagrant comets, far-distant stars and dimly-shining nebulae. The spectroscope also makes it possible to measure the velocities of objects which are approaching or receding from us.
We find irregular nebulae, for example; we find spiral and spheroidal nebulae; we find stars which have got beyond the nebulous stage, but are still at a whiter heat than our sun; and we also find many stars which yield the same sort of spectrum as our sun.
So stood the case for a long time; it was settled to the satisfaction of Europe that there were two classes of nebulae, one that were worlds, one that were not, but only the pabulum of future worlds. Silence arose. A voice was heard, 'Let there be Lord Rosse! and immediately his telescope walked into Orion; destroyed the supposed matter of stars; but, in return, created immeasurable worlds.
The inference seems forced upon us that the same process of concentration which has gone on in the case of our solar nebula has been going on in the case of other nebulae. The history of the sun is but a type of the history of stars in general.
The large amount of knowledge of the stellar universe, and especially of nebulae, of comets and of meteor-streams which we now possess, together with many other phenomena, such as the constitution of Saturn's rings, the great number and extent of the minor planets, and generally of the vast amount of matter in the form of meteor-rings and meteoric dust in and around our system, have all pointed to a different origin for the planets and their satellites than that formulated by Laplace as the Nebular hypothesis.
Not only was he an able astronomer and mathematician, but by his time it was known that nebulae, or vast clouds of dispersed matter, actually existed in the heavens. Here was a solid basis for the speculation. Sir William Herschel, the most assiduous explorer of the heavens, was a contemporary of Laplace. Laplace therefore took the nebula as his starting-point.
The object of the study of nebulae is merely that we may know about nebulae; the object of the study of inhabitants is that sociological laws may be deduced, and that, on the foundation of these laws, a better life for the people may be established.
But the nebulae have other affinities not until recently suspected; for the spectra of some of them are practically identical with the spectra of certain comets. The conclusion seems warranted that comets are in point of fact minor nebulae that are drawn into our system; or, putting it otherwise, that the telescopic nebulae are simply gigantic distant comets. Lockyer's Meteoric Hypothesis
Word Of The Day
Others Looking