On Spiral Planetary Orbits and the Physical Effects of a Retardation of the Earth

Extract

When we see the untenable deductions to which even such an eminent man as Professor Frankland is led, in his new glacial doctrines, by basing a meteorological hypothesis upon the unproven basis of a central molten core in our planet, we cannot but be the more convinced of the necessity of reconsidering the theories and hypotheses which have been proposed to account for the origin and supposed early conditions of our earth. We have been called upon by geologists to reject the Mosaic cosmogony because its statements were not coincident with geological facts, and equally now are we called upon to examine what those asserted geological facts are, and whether the asserted superior theories of geologists are substantially correct, or whether they are one whit less mythical than the traditions of aboriginal peoples.

Because men saw what through their telescopes looked like luminous clouds, the elder Herschel and Laplace assumed the idea, still later urged by Nichols, that these celestial nebula were vast masses of ethereal vapours condensing into stars. Modern telescopes, however, constantly being increased in size and power, have resolved one after the other of these into wonderful star-systems—dust-clouds of brilliant suns. And has not every one of these far distant stars non-luminous planets and worlds rolling round it, as our earth and its sister-planets round our sun?