Buffon's Natural History, Volume 01 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Mineral, &c. &cBuffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History, Volume 01 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Mineral, &c. &c
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
But, without dwelling any longer on the objections which might be made,
I shall pursue the subject, and draw the fair conclusions on the proofs
which analogies might furnish in favour of my hypothesis: let us,
therefore, first see what might happen when these planets, and
particularly the earth, received their impulsive motion, and in what
state they were after having been separated from the sun. The comet
having, by a single stroke, communicated a projectile motion to a
quantity of matter equal to the 650th part of the sun's mass, the light
particles would of course separate from the dense, and form, by their
mutual attraction, globes of different densities: Saturn being composed
of the most gross and light parts, would be the most remote from the
sun: Jupiter being more dense than Saturn, would be less distant, and so
on. The larger and least solid planets are the most remote, because
they received an impulsive motion stronger than the smallest, and more
dense: for, the force of impulsion communicating itself according to the
surface, the same stroke would have moved the grosser and lighter parts
of the matter of the sun with more velocity than the smallest and more
weighty; a separation therefore will be made of the dense parts of
different degrees, so that the density of the sun being equal to 100,
that of Saturn will be equal to 67, that of Jupiter to 94-1/2, that of
Mars to 200, that of the Earth to 400, that of Venus to 800, and that of
Mercury to 2800. But the force of attraction not communicating like that
of impulsion, according to the surface, but acting on the contrary on
all parts of the mass, it will have checked the densest portions of
matter; and it is for this reason that the densest planets are the
nighest the sun, and turn round that planet with greater rapidity than
the less dense planets, which are also the most remote.
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