PROFESSOR G. P. SERVISS ON THE BIRTH OF A NEW WORLD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2284, 9 December 1897, Page 50

PROFESSOR G. P. SERVISS ON THE BIRTH OF A NEW WORLD.

Is the Earth to be Destroyed?

Whatever may be thought of the alleged discovery of Professor S. J. Corrigan, of the Goodsell Observatory, of three hitherto unrecognised planets circling between the earth and the sun, and of another planet yet unfinished and in process of evolution from the snn, the breaking off of which from the solar body threatens the destruction of all living forms on the earth by fire, at any rata his suggestion of the birth of these new worlds out of the central body of the solar system awakens a train of thought which places the sun in a new and startling light.

The separation of a vast molten mass from the sun would produce effects that might easily make themselves felt across many millions of miles of space. The fact is that we- have, perhaps, been wrong in lookiog upon the sun as a body which has already passed through all ths more violent stages of evolution and has entered upon a steady course of radiation and slow cooling, leading ultimately and placidly to gradual extinction in cold and gloom.

Professor Oorrigan is probably right in recalling us to a realisation of the fact that, ij>?st as we depend upon the sun for light, heat, and life itself, so we should look to the sun only when we try to lift the curtain that hides the future fate of the globe we live on.

The idea which he suggests, that ths birth of a new world should have the effect of destroying the life of an older one, has a peculiar significance. Granted that a planet may be born from the sun in the way he points out, the consequences indicated might well result. Life on this earth is possible only through a very delicate balance of conditions and forces, and thef evidence is daily accumulating that even comparatively slight disturbances in the sun are capable of affecting that balance in various ways.

Ie ia simply a question of the amount and intensity of the disturbance propagated from the suq, whether it passes io an electric storm or produces some more serious effect on the atmosphere of the earth. The wellknown phenomena of sun spots are sufficient %o indicate the tremendous nature of these energies which are continually active in the sun. The astronomer at his telescope sees a huge black spot on the solar disc, with torn and rsgg^d edges, surrounded with heaped up masses of metallic vapours, thousands of miles in height. He beholds other masses of such vapour spoutinj?, as from the bowels of a tremendous volcano, to an elevation of hundreds of thousands of miles, and instantly upon the appearance of the solar outbreak electric impulses shoot round the earth, playing with the telegraphic instruments and waving mysterious auroral streamers in the higher atmosphere. Yet what he has Been in the suu, and what has produced so sur■prisiDg an effect on the earth, is a mere nothing compared with such an outburst as vroedd attend the birth of a new planet from the body of the sun.

The mysterious sun spots which have puzzled astronomers since Galileo saw them with his first telescope, the tremendous upheavals from the solar surface to which reference has already been made ; the gashing- up of vapourised matter from the interior of the sun, and the unexplained periodical character of all these correlated phenomena, like the ebbing and flowing of ■& tide, are regarded by Professor Corrigan as proofs that the time is near, and perhaps just at hand, when another planetary birth is to take place. The spote, the blazing faculas streaking the solar surface at intervals, tha violent outbursts followed by subsidences— all these are regarded as indications of the straining of the giant in its birth throes*

When the detachment of the matter that is to form the new planet occurs, phenomena such- as no man ' ever ' beheld must present themselves in ' the sun. Stars' have been known suddenly to blaze forth with hundreds and even thousands of times their former intensity. Something of this kind would probably occur if the predicted birth should take place in the sun.

Bat if Professor Corrigan's prediction is well founded, and a new planet is about to b« added to the solar family^ and the earth is in danger from the consequences of the disturbances that the birth of the new world will create, yet it would not follow that the newest member .of the system is to be equal in magnitude and importance to the older ones. The three new planets which Professor Oorrigan thinks he has found nearer to the sun than the ancient planet Mercury are all comparatively small bodies, and the circumstances of its formation would prescribe for tb.3 one that is not yet separated from the sun a similar insignificance in magnitude. Moreover, its orbit will be so near the sun that a consuming heat must continue to fall upon its surface as long as the son remains in its present state, so that the chances would appear to be all against the development of living forms upon it.

Professor Corrigan evidently thinks that the birth of one of the email intra-Mercurial planets just referred to was the cause of the catastrophe which geology . indicates overtook the earth some 20 odd millions of years ago. Since that disaster, however, the earth has recovered its living forms and advanced to a stage of evolution far beyond anything that existed previously. — Gabbbtt P. Serviss, in the New York Journal.