Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel. Ignatius Donnelly

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Название Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Автор произведения Ignatius Donnelly
Жанр Языкознание
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Издательство Языкознание
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isbn 4057664649140



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coming from above, smashed, pounded, and crushed "as with a maul," and rooted up as with a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered them for hundreds of miles from their original location.

      {p. 64}

      Thirdly, we are to find something which brought to the planet vast, incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain any of the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth,

      Look not like th' inhabitants of earth,

       And yet are on it; "

      which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere else on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been discovered on the planet.

      Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic convulsions upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature furnish us no parallel.

      Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it would crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its surface with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior boiled up to the light.

      Would a comet meet all these prerequisites?

      I think it would.

      Let us proceed in regular order.

      {p. 65}

      CHAPTER II.

      WHAT IS A COMET?

      IN the first place, are comets composed of solid, liquid, or gaseous substances? Are they something, or the next thing to nothing?

      It has been supposed by some that they are made of the most attenuated gases, so imponderable that if the earth were to pass through one of them we would be unconscious of the contact. Others have imagined them to be mere smoke-wreaths, faint mists, so rarefied that the substance of one a hundred million miles long could, like the genie in the Arabian story, be inclosed in one of Solomon's brass bottles.

      But the results of recent researches contradict these views:

      Padre Secchi, of Rome, observed, in Donati's comet, of 1858, from the 15th to the 22d of October, that the nucleus threw out intermittingly from itself appendages having the form of brilliant, coma-shaped masses of incandescent substance twisted violently backward. He accounts for these very remarkable changes of configuration by the influence first of the sun's heat upon the comet's substance as it approached toward perihelion, and afterward by the production in the luminous emanations thus generated of enormous tides and perturbation derangements. Some of the most conspicuous of these luminous developments occurred on October 11th, when the comet was at its nearest approach to the earth, and on

      {p. 66}

      October 17th, when it was nearest to the planet Venus. He has no doubt that the close neighborhood of the earth and Venus at those times was the effective cause of the sudden changes of aspect, and that those changes of aspect may be accepted as proof that the comet's substance consists of "really ponderable material."

      Mr. Lockyer used the spectroscope to analyze the light of Coggia's comet, and he established beyond question that--

      "Some of the rays of the comet were sent either from solid particles, or from vapor in a state of very high condensation, and also that beyond doubt other portions of the comet's light issue from the vapor shining by its own inherent light. The light coming from the more dense constituents, and therefore giving a continuous colored spectrum, was, however, deficient in blue rays, and was most probably emitted by material substance at the low red and yellow stages of incandescence."

      Padre Secchi, at Rome, believed he saw in the comet "carbon, or an oxide of carbon, as the source of the bright luminous bands," and the Abbé Moigno asks whether this comet may not be, after all, "un gigantesque diamant volatilisé."

      "Whatever may be the answer hereafter given to that question, the verdict of the spectroscope is clearly to the effect that the comet is made up of a commingling of thin vapor and of denser particles, either compressed into the condition of solidification, or into some physical state approaching to that condition, and is therefore entirely in accordance with the notion formed on other grounds that the nucleus of the comet is a cluster of solid nodules or granules, and that the luminous coma and tail are jets and jackets of vapor, associated with the more dense ingredients, and swaying and streaming about them as heat and gravity, acting antagonistic ways, determine."[1]

      [1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 210.]

      {p. 67}

      If the comet shines by reflected light, it is pretty good evidence that there must be some material substance there to reflect the light.

      "A considerable portion of the light of the comet is, nevertheless, borrowed from the sun, for it has one property belonging to it that only reflected light can manifest. It is capable of being polarized by prisms of double-refracting spar. Polarization of this character is only possible when the light that is operated upon has already been reflected from an imperfectly transparent medium."[1]

      There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether the bead of the comet is solid matter or inflammable gas.

      "There is nearly always a point of superior brilliancy perceptible in the comet's head, which is termed its nucleus, and it is necessarily a matter of pressing interest to determine what this bright nucleus is; whether it is really a kernel of hard, solid substance, or merely a whiff of somewhat more condensed vapor. Newton, from the first, maintained that the comet is made partly of solid substance, and partly of an investment of thin, elastic vapors. If this is the case, it is manifest that the central nodule of dense substance should be capable of intercepting light when it passes in front of a more distant luminary, such as a fixed star. Comets, on this account, have been watched very narrowly whenever they have been making such a passage. On August 18, 1774, the astronomer Messier believed that he saw a second bright star burst into sight from behind the nucleus of a comet which had concealed it the instant before. Another observer, Wartmann, in the year 1828, noticed that the light of an eighth-magnitude star was temporarily quenched as the nucleus of Encke's comet passed over it."[2]

      Others, again, have held that stars have been seen through the comet's nucleus.

      [1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.

      2. Ibid., p. 206.]

      {p. 68}

      Amédée Guillemin says:

      "Comets have been observed whose heads, instead of being nebulous, have presented the appearance of stars, with which, indeed, they have been confounded."[1]

      When Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Urania, he thought it was a comet.

      Mr. Richard A. Proctor says:

      "The spectroscopic observations made by Mr. Huggins on the light of three comets show that a certain portion, at least, of the light of these objects is inherent. … The nucleus gave in each case three bands of light, indicating that the substances of the nuclei consisted of glowing vapor."[2]

      In one case, the comet-head seemed, as in the case of the, comet examined by Padre Secchi, to consist of pure carbon.

      In the great work of Dr. H. Schellen, of Cologne, annotated by Professor Huggins, we read:

      "That the nucleus of a comet can not be in itself a dark and solid body, such as the planets are, is proved by its great transparency; but this does not preclude the possibility of its consisting of innumerable solid particles separated from one another, which, when illuminated by the sun, give, by the reflection of the solar light, the impression of a homogeneous mass. It has, therefore, been concluded that comets are either composed of a substance which, like gas in a state of extreme rarefaction, is perfectly transparent, or of small solid particles individually separated by intervening spaces through which the light of a star can pass without obstruction, and which, held together by mutual attraction, as well as by gravitation toward