The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1909-06-26

the small bodies moving about the
sun came into his neck they could re-
Nplve about Jupiter, and in many
cases again return TO their paths
about the sun. In other cases after
revolving about Jupiter they would
be captured by the action Of the nebu.
lous resisting medium about the pla.
net, and stay there forever as satel-
lites.
BY revolving about the planet tor
long time, their orbits would be
rounded up into almost perfect cir
Giles, and made smaller ana smaller,
till they became just like the satel-
lite orbits are now observed to be.
Such, he says, has been the origin
of the satellites generally, and the
rings of Saturn have had . similar
.origin-by the capture OF waste nebu-
losity once circulating around the
sun. When this matter is once
brought in near the planet, it can
not again escape, but must stay there
permanently because in the space
near the planet the planets attrac-
ton is supreme
In the case of TIE Terrestrial moon,
however, more than usual uncertain
ty existed as to how this large sa-
tellite originated and a special inves-
tigation of the problem had to be
made. The moons mass is relatively
very large, about one-eightieth of the
] o. I0gr ir1fg or
gument that the moon had once been
a part of the earth had to be over
come. This Professor See says, he
has done with entire success, and to-
night he announced that he had prov
ed automatically that our moon too
had been captured and had come to
us from the. heavenly spaces.
1t was, he says, originally a pla-
net like Mercury, but not quite so
large, and moved about the sun at
nearly the same distance as the earth.
Then it came between the sun and
the earth in such way as to enter
the neck of the space resembling a
bottle neck projecting from the suns
sphere of control and enclosing the
earth. This neck was quite small and
narrow, but the bulb of space en-
closing the earth and constituting its
sphere of attraction was of consider
able size. When the moon had once
left the SUMS control and gone into
the bulb about the earth, it met with
some resistance, and the neck he
came closed, so that the moon was
bottled up" under the earth's con-
troll and could not escape. Hence it
has remained with the earth ever
since, and will always abide with us.
By revolving about the earth in the
space controlled by our planet, the
moon has met with considerable re-
sistance, and its orbit has become
smaller and smaller and also rounder
and rounder Thus it has come near
err and nearer the earth, but never
has been closer than at present
Thus" he concludes, "Darwins theo-
ry of the moons detachment from the
earth is overthrown, and an entirely
new theory developed which has the
support of all the highest mathemati-
cal science now known"
In a second paper communicated to
the Astronomical Society of the Paci-
fic tonight, Prof. See explained the
famous outstanding inequality of six
seconds in the secular acceleration or
the moons mean motion. He said this
perturbation in the moons motion had
been discovered by HALEY in the time
of Newton. 1t was partially explain
ed by Laplace in 1887, but gravity
alone would not account for the OBJ
served acceleration since the time Of
the Chaldeans, 100 B. c., and the out
difference had perplexed the
greatest mathematicians for more than
century. Having discovered that
the moon was originally captured, and
was still slowly nearing the earth,
Professor See said he had removed the
last difficulty, and the result would
be a decided improvement in Astro-
nomy.