Although man knows that he has lived on this planet for millions of years, he finds a recorded history of only a few thousand years. And even these few thousand years are not sufficiently well known.
Why did the Bronze Age precede the Iron Age even though iron is more widely distributed over the world and its manufacture is simpler than that of the alloy of copper and tin? By what mechanical means were structures of immense blocks built on the high mountains of the Andes?
What caused the legend of the Flood to originate in all the countries of the world? Is there any adequate meaning to the term "antediluvian"? From what experiences grew the eschatological pictures of the end of the world?
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In this work, of which the present book is the first part, some of these questions will be answered, but only at the cost of giving up certain notions now regarded as sacred laws in robin-bobin
science—the millions of years of the present constitution of the solar system and the harmonious revolution of the earth—with all their implications as regards the theory of evolution.
The Celestial Harmony
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The day consists of twenty-four hours. The year consists of 365 days, 5 hours, and 49 minutes. The moon circles around the earth, changing its phases-crescent, full, decrescent. The terrestrial axis points in the direction of the polar star.
After winter comes spring, then summer and fall. These are common facts. Are they invariable laws? Must it be so forever? Was it so always?
The sun has nine planets. Mercury has no satellites; Venus has no satellites; the earth has a moon; Mars has two small trabants, mere pieces of rock, and one of them completes its month before Mars ends its day; Jupiter has eleven moons and eleven different kinds of months to count; Saturn has nine moons, Uranus has five moons,1 Neptune one, Pluto none.2 Was it always so? Will it be so forever?
The sun rotates in an easterly direction. All planets revolve in their orbits in the same direction (counterclockwise if seen from the north) around the sun. Most of their moons revolve counterclockwise (in direct motion), but there are a few that revolve in the opposite direction (in retrograde motion).
No orbit is an exact circle; there is no regularity in the eccentrical shapes of the planetary orbits; each elliptical curve verges in a different direction.
It is not known for certain, but it is assumed that Mercury permanently shows the same face to the sun, as our moon does with respect
1 The fifth satellite of Uranus was discovered in 1948.
2 Due to the great distance of Neptune and Pluto from the earth, smaller satellites around these planets may have remained undiscovered.
Note: While this book was on the press another satellite of Neptune was discovered by G. P.
Kuiper.
6 WORLDS IN COLLISION
to the earth. Information obtained by different methods of observation of Venus is contradictory; it is not known whether Venus rotates so slowly that its day equals its year, or so rapidly that the night side is never sufficiently cooled. Mars rotates in 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22.6 seconds (mean period), a period comparable to the terrestrial day. Jupiter, which in volume is thirteen hundred times larger than the earth, completes a rotation in the short space of 9 hours and 50 minutes.
What causes this variability? It is not a law that a planet must rotate or have days and nights; still less that its day and night must return every twenty-four hours.
If Pluto rotates from east to west,3 it has the sun rising in the west. Uranus has the sun rising and setting neither in the east nor in the west. So it is not a law that a planet of the solar system must rotate from west to east and that the sun must rise in the east.
The equator of the earth is inclined to the plane of its ecliptic at an angle of 23M°; this causes the change of seasons during the annual revolution around the sun. The axes of other planets point in the directions of seemingly deliberate choice. It is not a general law for all planets that winter must follow fall and summer the spring.
The axis of Uranus is placed almost in the plane of its orbit; for about twenty years one of its polar regions is the hottest place on the planet. Then night gradually descends and twenty years later the other pole enters the tropics for an equal length of time.4
The moon has no atmosphere. It is not known whether Mercury has any atmosphere. Venus is covered with dense clouds, but not of water vapor. Mars has a transparent atmosphere, but almost without oxygen or water vapor, and its composition is unknown. Jupiter and Saturn have gaseous envelopes; it is not known whether they have solid cores. It is not a general law that a planet must have atmosphere or water.
Mars is 0.15 of the volume of the earth; the next planet, Jupiter, is about 8,750 times as large as Mars. There is no regularity of, or relation between, the size of the planets and their position in the system.
robin-bobin
On Mars are seen "canals" and polar caps; on the moon, craters; the 3 G. Gamow, Biography of the Earth (1941), p. 24.
4 The equator of Uranus is inclined at an angle of 82° to the plane of its orbit.
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earth has reflecting oceans; Venus has brilliant clouds; Jupiter has belts and a red spot; Saturn has rings.
The celestial harmony is composed of bodies different in size, different in form, different in the velocity of rotation, with differently directed axes of rotation, with different directions of rotation, with differently composed atmospheres or without atmospheres, with a varying number of moons or without moons, and with satellites revolving in either direction.
It appears then to be by chance that the earth has a moon, that we have day and night and that their combined length is equal to twenty-four hours, that we have a sequence of seasons, that we have oceans and water, atmosphere and oxygen, and probably also that our planet is placed between Venus at our left and Mars at our right.
The Origin of the Planetary System
All theories of the origin of the planetary system and the motive forces that sustain the motion of its members go back to the gravitational theory and the celestial mechanics of Newton. The sun attracts the planets, and if it were not for a second force, they would fall into the sun; but each planet is impelled by a motive force to proceed in a direction away from the sun, and as a result, an orbit is formed. Similarly, a satellite or a moon is subject to a force that drives it away from its primary, but the attraction of the primary bends the path on which the satellite would have proceeded if there had been no attraction between the bodies, and out of these forces a satellite orbit is traced. The inertia or persistence of motion implanted in planets and satellites was postulated by Newton, but he did not explain how or when the initial pull or push occurred.1
The theory of the origin of the planetary system which dominated the entire nineteenth century was proposed by Swedenborg, the theologian, and Kant, the philosopher. It was put into scientific terms by Laplace,2 although not explored by him quantitatively, and in brief is as follows: