In a memoir on the "Evolution of the Solar System," by Professor T.
J. J. See, the author, while not denying the possibility of other
systems like our own, still considers our system unique. Here are his
words: "Therefore, while observation gives us no grounds for denying
the existence of other systems like our own, it does not enable us
to affirm, or even to render probable, that such systems do exist."
Because a number of binary stars have been discovered in which the two
stars are nearly equal in mass, and their orbits highly eccentric, he
therefore concludes that the millions of stars that stud the heavens
are probably without satellites. The unreasonableness of this attitude
is emphasized by realizing that these innumerable suns are similar
to our own Sun, as revealed by the spectroscope, and have a similar
eruptive energy. Professor Newcomb, however, says: "Evidence is
continually increasing that dark and opaque worlds like ours exist and
revolve around their primaries." Had Mr. See discovered that every
star of the many million was accompanied by another star nearly equal
in mass, with its marked eccentric behavior, then only would he be
justified in his inference that our solar system was indeed unique.
When one realizes that the stars are at such unimaginable distances
that the highest powers of the telescope reveal even the nearest of
them only as points of light--not as disks--and when one further
realizes that the satellites of our Sun, even the largest of them,
are diminutive globes compared to the vastness of the Sun, it seems
unreasonable if not impossible to entertain the idea that none of these
remote stars are accompanied by satellites, and that, therefore, this
little Sun of ours stands without parallel in the universe.
Tyndall, in his famous reply to the critics of his Belfast address,
in speaking of the origin of life, referred to the Nebular Theory
as follows: "According to it our sun and planets were once diffused
through space as an impalpable haze out of which by condensation
came the solar system. What caused it to condense? Loss of heat.
What rounded the sun and planets? That which rounds a tear,
molecular force." In these terse and graphic expressions we are made
to understand the universality of law. So far as we have sounded
the depths of the stellar universe we see the same obedience to
gravitational laws, the same flashing lines in the spectrum. We
encounter no phenomena that cannot be explained, or at least inferred,
by the knowledge we have obtained from our little mote of the Cosmos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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