Again; it is stated by Sir Robert Ball that a body of a pound’s weight falling from a great distance into the sun, might, in the course of its friction through the sun’s atmosphere, generate as much heat as would be produced by the combustion of many times its own weight of coal, if consumed under the most favorable circumstances. Is there sufficient evidence yet given to prove that this is not a source of the sun’s light and heat instead of contraction? The moon, we will say, contains 5,000 millions of cubic miles. If the sun’s radius was 100 millions of miles, or extended as far as earth, it would have a surface of 120,000 trillions of square miles. Place the earth on its surface and it would occupy less than 1,000 millionth of that surface, allowing it to settle into it one-half. The moon’s volume if spread over earth’s surface would cover it but twenty-five miles deep. If then, the same quantity of material were spread over the sun while reaching out to earth it would be covered by it less than 1/300 of an inch in depth; so thinly, in fact that an apple-skin would be thick in comparison. Are we prepared to say this amount does not actually accumulate year by year on the surface of earth, for we are told: “The world is thus pelted on all sides day and night, year after year, century after century, by troops and battalions of shooting stars of every size, from objects not much larger than grains of sand up to mighty masses which can only be expressed in tons. In the lapse of ages our globe must thus be gradually growing by the everlasting deposit of meteoric debris. Looking back through the vista of time past, it becomes impossible to estimate how much of the solid earth may not owe its origin to this celestial source.”[19]