XVIII THE ORIGIN OF THE EARTH
It is not possible to consider the question of the origin of the earth apart from the question of the origin of the solar system. That all the planets, as well as the asteroids, originated from a common parent-mass has never been seriously questioned. All of these bodies revolve about the sun, and rotate upon their axes in the same direction—from west to east. Moreover, all of the planetary orbits lie very nearly in the same plane and are nearly circular in form.
The orbits of the asteroids are more elliptical and more highly inclined to one another than are the orbits of the planets, but on the average they are neither very elliptical nor very highly inclined to the planetary orbits.
The sun rotates upon its axis in the same direction in which the planets rotate and perform their revolutions, and the orbits of the planets are inclined at small angles to the plane of the sun's equator.
These facts are all significant and cannot be overlooked in formulating a theory to explain the origin of the planetary system in general and of the earth in particular. Presumably the planets and asteroids formed at one time a part of a central body which rotated on its axis in the direction in which they now revolve about the sun.
When and by the operation of what force, external or internal, they were separated from this central body is the question.
In 1796 La Place advanced his celebrated nebular hypothesis to explain the origin of the solar system. It was received with favor both by scientists and laymen, and in a short time was almost universally accepted as closely approximating to the truth.
According to the nebular hypothesis the solar nebula from which the planetary system was formed, originally extended at least as far as the orbit of Neptune and rotated slowly in the direction in which the planets now revolve. As it lost heat by radiation and contracted under the gravitation of its parts its rate of rotation increased. When the centrifugal (center-fleeing) force at the equator equalled the gravitational force directed toward the center, a ring would be left behind by the contracting nebula. Such a ring would not be absolutely uniform and would break at some point and gather into a planetary mass under the gravitation of its parts. This planetary mass would abandon rings in turn and these would break up to form satellites. Successive rings were supposed to have been abandoned at intervals by the solar nebula at the present distances of the planets from the sun in the manner described above until the original solar nebula had contracted to its present size.
The rings of Saturn were supposed to be the single example remaining of this process of forming planets and satellites from a contracting nebulous mass.
The La Placian hypothesis attempted to explain why all the planets and their satellites revolve in the same direction in which the sun turns on its axis, in nearly circular orbits and nearly in the same plane. At the time it was advanced it appeared to be in accord with all the facts then known regarding the solar system.
The planetoids with their interlacing and in some instances highly inclined and elliptical orbits were then undiscovered. It would have been impossible for them to have been formed by the abandonment of successive rings from a central, rotating mass.
The constitution of Saturn's rings was unknown at this time; also the fact that the moonlets of the inner ring revolve about Saturn in half the time required for the planet to turn on its axis—another impossibility under the nebular hypothesis, for, according to the assumptions of the nebular hypothesis it would be impossible for a satellite to revolve about a central body in a shorter time than that body turns on its axis.
The satellites of Mars were not discovered until many years later, as well as the retrograding satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, all presenting difficulties in the way of accepting the nebular hypothesis without radical changes. Attempts, mostly unsuccessful, have been made from time to time to make these exceptional cases fit in with the requirements of the nebular hypothesis.
The theory that the sun's heat was maintained by the contraction of the original solar nebula, which would cause its temperature to rise, appeared to give considerable support to the theory of La Place, but the mathematicians got to work and showed that the amount of heat that would be furnished by the contraction of the sun from beyond the orbit of Neptune to its present dimensions would be sufficient to supply heat to the earth at the present rate for only twenty-five million years, a period far too brief, the geologists and biologists said, to cover all the vast cyclical changes that are known to have taken place upon the surface of this planet since its surface crust was formed. Evidently gravitational contraction is by no means the only or even the chief source of the sun's heat.
It was also shown indisputably, that it would have been impossible for successive rings to have been abandoned at certain definite intervals by a contracting nebula, and granted a ring could have been formed it would have been impossible for it to condense into a planet, since forces residing in the sun would offset the gravitation of its parts.
When La Place advanced his famous theory it was, to use his own words, "with that distrust which everything ought to inspire that is not a result of observation or of calculation."
Were La Place living today he would be, we believe, the first to abandon a theory that is now known to be in accord neither with observation nor calculation.
Deprived of a theory that has served to explain the outstanding features of the solar system more or less adequately for one hundred and twenty-five years, astronomers are seeking in the light of recent observations and discoveries to formulate a satisfactory theory of the origin of the solar system.
In the planetesimal theory of Chamberlin and Moulton and the recently suggested theory of the well-known English mathematician, Jeans, a second sun passing close to our own sun is assumed to have been the cause of the origin of the planetary system.
The effect of the close approach of such a sun would be the ejection of a stream of matter from our sun, as we term it, in the direction of the passing body and also in a diametrically opposite direction. This ejection would be continuous as long as the stars remained near one another, the height attained by the ejected stream decreasing as the passing star receded. The result would be the formation of a spiral nebula in which the motion of the ejected particles—planetesimals—would be across the spiral arms, toward and away from the passing star. After the sun had receded so far as to have no further effect upon these ejected particles they would revolve about the sun in more or less elliptical orbits which would gradually be reduced to nearly circular forms by repeated collisions between planetesimals. Larger nuclei would be formed and these would gradually sweep up smaller fragments and become the planets of the present system. Smaller nuclei in the vicinity of larger ones would become their satellites and in the course of many millions of years all of the larger fragments would be swept up by the planetary nuclei and their satellites—leaving only the asteroids, comets and meteors as survivors of the original spiral system.
It must be borne in mind that a spiral nebula formed by the close approach of two suns would resemble in form only the great spiral nebulæ that are known to exist by hundreds of thousands in the heavens. These are far too extensive to form anything so small as a single solar system, but might condense into systems composed of many suns—either galaxies or star clusters.
Jean's suggested theory of the origin of the planetary system differs in its details from the above, though a passing sun is assumed to be the disturbing force that causes the ejection of a stream of matter which condenses to form the planets and their satellites. The origin of the inner planets is left greatly in doubt by this theory, however, and the system which interests us chiefly—the earth-moon system—is the one about which it is most difficult to arrive at any definite conclusion. Our own sun, it is assumed, was dark and cold, of low density and with a diameter about equal to that of Neptune's orbit at the time of the catastrophe which is placed at some 300,000,000 years ago. In Jean's words, "... The time for arriving at conclusions in cosmogony has not yet come—and it must be left to future investigators armed with more mathematical and observational knowledge than we at present possess to pronounce a final decision."
However, since La Place advanced his celebrated nebular hypothesis, great advances in astronomy have been made, and man is in a better position to theorize on this fascinating problem today than he was one hundred and twenty-five years ago.
All such theories must necessarily be regarded as working hypotheses only, to be discarded or modified as our knowledge and understanding of the laws of the universe increase. No theory can ever be regarded as final or perfect.
The discovery of radio-activity furnishes us with new material for new theories. The sun and the planets may be and probably are far older than we ever dreamed could be possible. It is no longer necessary or reasonable to assume that a greatly extended solar nebula once existed and supplied the planets with heat through gravitational contraction or to place a time limit upon the period required for the formation of the planets and their satellites that is not in accord with the requirements of other sciences.
We know today that there exist within the sun powerful repulsive forces, which even under present conditions occasionally eject gaseous matter to heights of five hundred thousand miles or more with a velocity of over two hundred miles per second. Small changes in the velocity of ejection produce great differences in the height of the ejected columns.
With an initial velocity of three hundred and eighty miles per second, matter would be thrown from the solar surface to a height of fifty million miles. Were the velocity of ejection three hundred and eighty-three miles per second the height of the column would be five hundred million miles, while a further increase in the initial velocity would send matter away from the sun, never to return.
Instead of suns and solar systems evolved from nebulæ we are now more familiar with the idea of nebulæ evolved from stars through some terrific cataclysm as in the case of novas or temporary stars.
It is now known that there exist in certain parts of space a number of sharply defined stars surrounded by extensive nebulous envelopes. Are these possibly suns that are going through the process of forming their planetary systems?
It is now known that pressure of light and electrical repulsion are forces to be reckoned with in the evolution of stars and nebulæ as well as gravitational contraction. It has long been felt that the peculiar formations existing among the vast irregular gaseous nebulæ could not be explained as gravitational effects alone.
Light-pressure and electrical repulsion, as well as gravitation are at work within the solar system and the sun is the seat of powerful disturbances which produce periodic outbursts of exceptional activity and which may have produced in the distant past more startling effects than any with which we are familiar at present.
The earth and moon form a system that is in a way unique. No satellite in the solar system is so large in proportion to its primary as is our own moon. Seen from the distance of Venus or Mars, the two bodies would apparently form a double star. The diameter of the moon is one-fourth that of the earth. Satellite III of Jupiter far exceeds our own moon in actual size but its diameter is only about four-hundredths of the diameter of the planet about which it revolves. The diameter of Titan, the largest satellite of the Saturnian system, bears the same ratio to the diameter of Saturn. Moreover, all the nearer satellites of Jupiter and Saturn lie nearly in the equatorial planes of these planets, but the orbit of the moon is inclined at a high angle to the plane of the earth's equator.
It is not difficult to believe that the satellites of Jupiter or Saturn were at some time thrown off from the equatorial belts of their primaries, just as the planets themselves may have been ejected from the equatorial belt of the sun, but we cannot so readily believe that our own satellite was formed from the earth in a similar manner.
The moon's orbit lies nearly in the plane of the sun's equator, however, and it is conceivable that both earth and moon were simultaneously ejected from the equatorial zone of the sun, the two nuclei being so close together that the smaller one remained under the gravitational control of the larger.
The difficulties in the way of believing that the moon once formed a part of the earth are very great. It can be shown mathematically that if the two bodies at one time formed a single mass it would have been impossible for the moon to break away from the earth, unless the force that caused the separation were sufficient to hurl the moon to a greater distance than two and a half times the earth's radius. The mathematician, Roche, found out by computation that a satellite could not remain intact within this distance of the planet, but would be broken up into small fragments under the effects of the tides raised by the larger body.
If, then, the moon had originally been ejected from the earth to a less distance than two and one-half radii of the earth (2.44 to be exact) it would have been disintegrated into small particles, or moonlets, under the tidal strains exerted upon it by the earth and would have been gradually distributed about the earth in the form of a meteoric ring which, in the course of ages, would be absorbed by the earth, just as Saturn is now gradually absorbing its rings.
The planets differ greatly in density. The more distant and larger planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—have densities equal to or less than that of the sun. The densities of the inner planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are, relatively, extremely high, the density of the Earth's core being about that of meteoric iron. The densities of Mercury and Venus are slightly less than that of the earth and the densities of Mars and the moon about equal to that of the earth's crust.
If a stream of matter were ejected from the sun under the influence of some external force, such as that exerted by a passing star, the outlying parts of the stream would consist of the lighter elements and the lower parts of the heavier elements, since the lighter solar elements lie at or near the surface of the sun and the heavier elements at greater depths. At the time of ejection the lighter elements would be thrown to great distances and would go to form the less dense outer planets; the heavier elements would go to form the inner planets of high density.
It is conceivable that ejection of solar material might have taken place under the influence of certain forces at work within the sun itself, such as electrical repulsion or pressure of light which might become powerful enough under certain conditions to overcome the effect of gravitation.
Next to nothing is known about the physical state of matter at great solar depths, where abnormal conditions of temperature and pressure must exist, and where great physical changes and disturbances may have taken place in the past. Even today solar activity goes through a cycle of change during the sun-spot period, and many millions of years ago the sun-spot cycle of solar activity may have been far different from what it is today and a far more powerful factor in producing changes in the solar system.
Outbursts of novas indicate that agencies making for peace and order are not the only ones at work among the stars. The cause of such outbursts has never been satisfactorily explained. The theory that they are caused by the close approach of two suns or by the encounter of a star with a dark nebula does not account for all of the circumstances of such outbursts. The nebulous matter seen about a nova after the outburst is now generally believed to have been expelled from the star itself at the time of the catastrophe and may conceivably be the stuff of which planetary systems are made.
At some epoch in the past, probably at least one thousand million years ago, our own sun may have undergone some cataclysmic change and this may, conceivably, have been brought about by disturbances within the sun itself. Elements may have been so formed and distributed within the interior of the sun that friction and internal instability resulted and in time produced an upheaval of solar elements with initial velocities so great that, possibly, through electrical repulsion and light-pressure, portions of the ejected streams were permanently detached from the sun and became the nuclei of future planets. In some such way, it is conceivable, our own planet Earth and the other members of our solar system may have been brought into existence in the dim and distant past—many hundred million years ago.