Let us suppose that the final separation of the ring took place
somewhere near the half-distance between his orbit and that of
Uranus, say, 2,290,000,000 miles from the centre of the nebula, the
breadth of the ring would be the difference between the radius of
the original nebula, i.e. 33,000,000,000 miles and the above sum,
which is 1,010,000,000 miles. Then if we divide the area of the cross
section of the ring by this breadth, that is, 516,912,620,000,000 by
1,010,000,000, we find that the thickness would be 511,794 miles;
provided the ring did not contract from its outer edge inwards during
the process of separation. This could not, of course, be the case,
but, as we have no means of finding how much it would contract in that
direction, we cannot assign any other breadth for it; and we shall
proceed in the same manner in calculating the thicknesses of the rings
for all the other planets as we go along. We can, however, make one
small approach to greater accuracy. We shall see presently that the
density of the ring would be increased threefold at its inner edge as
compared with the outer during the process of separation, which would
reduce its average thickness to somewhere about 341,196 miles at
density of water, of course. The nebula remaining after Neptune's ring
we may now call
THE URANIAN NEBULA.
The volume of the nebula after abandoning the ring for the system
of Neptune was found to be 150,523,772,692^{18} cubic miles at its
original density, but during the separation it has been condensed
into a sphere of 4,580,000,000 miles in diameter, whose volume would
be 50,303,255,814^{18} cubic miles; so that if we divide the larger
of these two volumes by the smaller, we find that the density of the
Uranian nebula would be increased 2·9923 times, and therefore it would
then be 311,754,100,720 divided by 2·9923, equal to 104,184,535,721
times less dense than water. Furthermore, if we compare it to the
density of air, which we can do by dividing this last quantity by
773·395, we find it to have been 134,710,620 times less than that
density; and if we apply the air thermometer to it, we shall find that
its absolute temperature must have been 274 divided by 134,710,620 =
0·000002034° or -273·9999796.°
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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