Discussions on climate and cosmology / by James Croll.

  • James Croll
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discussions on climate and cosmology / by James Croll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quently, when their store of energy is exhausted, they will be non-luminous again. Light and heat are not the permanent possession of a body. A body may retain its energy in the form of motion undiminished and untransformed through all eternity, but not so in the form of heat and light. These are forms of energy which are being constantly dissipated into space and lost in so far as the body is concerned. The conclusion to which we are therefore led is that there are in all probability bodies in stellar space which have not yet received their store of light and heat, while there are others which have entirely lost it. The stars are probably only those stellar masses which, having recently had an encounter, have become possessed of light and heat. They have gained in light and heat what they have lost in motion, but they have gained a possession which they cannot retain, and when it is lost they become again what they originally were—dark bodies. 2nd. We have no instances of stellar motions com- parable with those demanded by the theory. A little consideration will show that this is an objection which, like the former, can hardly be admitted. No body, of course, moving at the rate of 400 miles per second, could remain a member of our solar system; and beyond our system the only bodies visible are the nebulae and fixed stars; and they are according to the theory visible, because, like the sun, they have lost their motion—the lost motion being the origin of their light and heat. Their comparatively small velocities are in reality evidence in favour of the theory than otherwise; for had the stars been moving with exces- sive velocities, this would have been adduced as proof that their light and heat could not have been derived from motion lost, as the theory assumes.