If the heat were, at a given moment--that is, when motion was stopped--brought into existence uniformly throughout the entire mass, which, according to the law of conversion of motion into heat and _vice versâ_, would most assuredly be the case, and each pound of the mass possessed 100,000,000,000 foot-pounds of heat, it could not be heaped up on the outer layers of the blocks--it matters not whether this means the layers of the outside of the whole mass, or at the outsides of the blocks--for the energy of lost motion, converted into heat, must have existed at the centres of the blocks or masses just in as great force as it did at the surfaces when motion was stopped. If each pound of matter carried along with it 100,000,000,000 foot-pounds of heat, that given out by one pound at the centre of a block would be as great as that given out by one pound at its surface; and the pounds at the surface could not acquire any greater heat from a neighbouring pound, because its neighbour could have no greater quantity to give it. Pounds of matter would be melted and vaporized, or converted into gas, just as readily at the centre of the mass or block as at its surface; and storing up of heat in the interstices of the blocks is rather a strange notion, because we are not at liberty to stow away heat in a vacuum. Besides, it is impossible to conceive how anything in the shape of a block could exist in any part of the whole mass, long enough for it to be blown out into space as a block. But supposing that a block could exist, it would most notoriously be in a state of _unstable equilibrium_; and were it then to receive from an explosion of gas, an impulse sufficient to drive it off to the verge of the sun's power of attraction--or rather to a distance equal to what that is--which would imply a velocity of not less than 360 miles per second, the shock would be quite sufficient to blow it into its constituent atoms. Moreover, as already stated, the heat of the explosion of the gas required to give the impulse would be immediately converted into motion, and disappear; so that out of the heat produced by the stoppage of a motion of 476 miles per second, that required to produce a motion of 360 miles per second, in each one of the blocks blown out to the distance above mentioned, would be entirely lost to the stock of heat schemed for so boldly. Of course, the less the distance from the centre the blocks were blown the less would be the loss, but the fact remains that there would be a loss instead of a gain of heat, in dispersing the matter of two half suns into space by explosions of gas. In fine, a given amount of heat will raise the temperature of a given amount of matter to an easily calculable degree, and no more; and if part of that is expended in expanding the volume of the matter, the whole stock of heat will be diminished by exactly the quantity required to produce the expansions. So that we come back to what we have said at page 54,