SPECULATIONS OF ASTRONOMERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9306, 5 August 1908, Page 2

SPECULATIONS OF ASTRONOMERS.

WILL THE WORLD BLOW TO \ / PIECES? There is no end to the speculations of the astronomers. Some of them have lately revived the startling hypothesis propounded a century ago that this solar system of ouns once contained a planet that blew itself to pieces. In support of this theory it is contended by a great Austrian geologist that there are bits of this ancient ex- ' ploded world which we may see and handle irt many museums, and that other fragments are continually falling upon us h'om the sky. In short, his belief is that meteorites are simply the pieces of a planet which formerly circulated between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, at a mean distance of some three hundred million miles from the earth, and which finally blew up with a force sufficient to scatter its fragments broadcast in space. But those fragments did not escape from the control of the sun. -They nave continued ever since the catastrophe to circle around the Ban in thousands, and perhaps millions, of separate orbits, and several hundreds of the larger pieces^ are visible to us in the form of asteroids. It is true, of course, that scientists have so far been unable to give us a detailed account of this vanished world, but the bare idea of a great planet nourishing in its vitals the anarchistic means of its own destruction is overwhelming. One cannot but ask one's self whether this can be a common characteristic of cooled off globes, in whose still heated entrails unknown chemical reactions are still going on. One would like to know, even if the answer were affirmative, whether a globe like ours can manufacture it© own dynamite and light its own fires internally. Possibly it may bo thought that the sudden outbursts called new stars which occasionally appear in the sky give us reason for questioning the soundness of the tacit assumption that the earth is overcasting. What do the mutterings of the volcanic forces mean, and how did ' the moon become the awful wreck that tlie telescope shows us? Perhaps a planet may blow up without going al- !, together to pieces.