The Washington times., 1919-07-13

other clouds until there are enough OF
them to make far flung nebula, which
win begin, obeying a natural law we do
not yet understand, to whirl about itself,
form into spiral, and after incalculable
ages give birth to suns and worlds like
or better than our own.
And among the factors still building up
our world the remains of the nebula from
which came our sun and his family is not
an inconsidersble one.
And this brings us to the very revol1-
tionary new theories Of science as to the
formation OF our earth. whose foremost
prutagonist is DR.. Thomas Crowder Cham
berlain, professor Of geology Of the Uni
versity Of Chicago and one Of the few great
minds Of the century. According to this
theory by him some time ago
in a remarkable address before the Amer
lean Association for the Advancement Of
Science and reaffirmed recently at a ceIe-
bration of the anniversary of his connec-
ton with the university-our earth was
never bigger than it is now. In fact, 1t
cast OF by the sun in a molten, semi
gaseous state, slowly cooling, immersed
for ages in scalding vapors and gradually
evolving into our globe of continents and
oceans-instead of all that, there was moth
ing like It at all.
Or as Professor Chamberlain puts this
faulty old theory:
1.-THE gaseous earth, by cooling and con-
densing, was thought to pass into a molten
sphere wrapped in hot, vaporous atrnos.
phere. This atmosphere was vast because
the conditions required it to contain all
the water Of the globe and all the volatile
matters that have since entered into the
waters and the body of the earth. At a
later stage crust was logically made to
form over the molten sphere and the
waters to condense upon It, swaddling the
entire globe perhaps in a universal ocean.
BY further cooling, shrinkage and deforma-
ton the waters were thought to be drawn
into basins, the land to appear and the
history Of the photographic record to begin
1t is important to note that the main
agency in this hypothetical history was
the loss of heat.
with the gathering Of the oceans more
and more into the basins and their absorb
ton into the body of the earth, with the
persistent consumption of the atmosphere
and with the progression Of the whole the
moisture Of the air was thought also to
have grown less and less. At first deep,
warm mantle of Vapor and cloud hypotheti-
cally clothed the whole earth, and even
half way down the geologic ages was
thought to have enshrouded the globe and
ATTITUDES, but this mantle at length was
made to give place to rifted clouds and
clearer skies, and later on to mild aridities
followed at length by desert stages, which
are even now supposed to be carried out
on the once fertile land. Thus
we reach our own times at a stage when
heat and afr and atmosphere are running
lower than usual. Thus the predestined
end is foreshadowed in the not distant
future"
This conception, says Professor Cham
berlain, shaped the earth's history as a
progress from excess to emaciation, a slid
ing down the scale; It made the life his
tory only an episode in the great decline
from the too hot and the too large to the
too cold and the too little.
This hypothesis developed a number OF
flaws which will be briefly stated later.
The new theory, called the planetesimal
hypothesis, pictures the earth, first as a
part of a widespread cold nebula. a mass
Of finely divided matter and gases This
enormous dust cloud had spiral notion
In various parts Of 1t the matter that
formed It began to condense into knots