WHERE DID THAT ONE GO TO?

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXIII, Issue 3250, 13 February 1933, Page 2

WHERE DID THAT ONE GO TO?

At one time the sun’s family. contained one more world than it does nowadays. We do not know what or how the catastrophe happened, but for some reason the world that is now missing exploded with such force that it was shattered literally Into splinters. For hundreds of years astronomers were puzzled by the big gap that exists between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. Venus is sixty-seven million miles from the sun, then comes the earth at ninety-three million miles, and next is Mars at 141 million miles. There should be another world at about 250 million miles from the sun, hut actually there is nothing until we come to Jupiter, 483 million miles away. Just over a century ago a new world was discovered in this apparently empty region. But it turned out to be so tiny that it could not bo the missing planet—or, at any rate, not all of it. The little stranger was Ceres, less than 500 miles in diameter, whilst the missing world should be a planet a good deal bigger than the earth.

As time went on more and more powerful telescopes led to the discovery of numbers of worldlets in the great gap. The total is now well over a thousand, and the latest one found is a minute body only four miles in diameter.

There is little doubt that the asteroids, as they are called, are the smithereens of a great planet that once used to spin round the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Probably there are millions of its fragments, some little bigger than brickbats, still dancing round the sun. The meteorites which sometimes fall from the sky on this world of ours are most likely part of the debris of the exploded world.

What touched off this celestial can-non-cracker? No one could suggest an explanation that seemed at all possible until mathematicians took the matter in hand. They found that every star and every planet has a danger zone surrounding it. If a smaller . body drifts Into this zone it is immediately torn to fragments. The moons which circle round the planets are just outside the danger zone. But millions of years ago one of Saturn’s moons (he still has nine left) came too close to him and paid the penalty. That moon, or rather the remains of it, now forms the famous rings surrounding Saturn. These rings are composed of minute particles of matter —the moon was blown almost to powder. Ages ago the lost world must have begun to draw nearer and nearer to the danger zone of the giant Jupiter, which is almost 1500 times as big as our earth. For millions of years nothing happened except that the terrific pull of Jupiter was felt more and more. Then quite suddenly there occurred the biggest bang that ever happened as the lost world met its doom. A bang is really not quite the right word, for, despite the stupendous and almost unimaginable force the explosion must have been a silent one! But how can there be such a thing as a silent explosion? Sounds can occur only where there is air—a bell placed in a vacuum is inaudible even when ringing violently. There is no air space, and no sound can have been heard when the greatest explosion that ever happened took place.