page break

The Third Body.

To The Editor.

Sir,—The theory of Cosmic Evolution, contains close on a hundred, scientific principles that at the time of their publication appear to have been unknown. Most are still quite unknown, or at least unused by-astronomers. The theory of cosmic atom sorting has been re-discovered, and a part of this branch of the theory is now current science. Many other ideas are vaguely used without acknowledging their source. Probably the users are unaware how they got the ideas. They do not in any way claim as their own; they are besides so imperfectly stated as to show they could not have been directly taken from my books.

The first, the most fundamental principle of the whole theory is that in the grazing collision of suns, a third body must be formed by the coalescence of the parts struck from each. In order to emphasise this idea I called this branch of the theory Partial Impact, clearly meaning that the impact did not extend to the whole of the colliding suns, only to the portions actually meeting, the remainder passing on hardly affected by the impact. Finding the idea, that a new body was formed, had been overlooked by scientific writers, in recent papers I called the two colliding suns "Flint and Steel," and the new body "Cosmic Spark." Still this third body is absolutely overlooked. Yet on this new third body the whole of this branch hinges. It is as essential to it as is a motor to an electric car. Most ludicrous is the effect of the oversight. Most ridiculous arguments load the discussion of the colliding two-sun-theory of new stars.

But it is in the writings of Sir Robert Ball that the oversight is most glaringly apparent. I have sent him my papers from the beginning, and as many of these have diagrams that strike the eye, these papers even when glanced through leave an impression. In a widely distributed article of his on double stars, he attributes them to grazing impact, yet without the third body his explanation could not make a double star of them. Both the wedding of the pair of stars and the character of their orbits depend on the new third body. Yet be never mentions it. In "Earth's Beginning" he says (page 356): "We have the best reason for knowing that celestial collisions do sometimes occur," and bases the remark on the new star, Nova Pensei. On page 360 he says:—"A collision affords the simplest explanation of the sudden outbreak of the star, and also accounts for the remarkable spectrum which the star exhibits." Yet other careful writers say a grazing impact of suns could not account for the spectrum of new stars. And without the third body they are right. Yet, Sir Robert Ball whilst accepting the results, never mentions this third body. So often is grazing impact referred to in "Earth's Beginning" that if the third body had been mentioned it would read like chapters from my system of evolution. Yet, save where he shows the Solar Nebula to have originated in a grazing impact (because he leaves out this third body) his references have no basis at all.

The wondrful new stars that suddenly appear, that increase in brilliancy until they are ten thousand times more luminous than the sun, were he placed at their distance away, that sometimes shine a score of times brighter than the superb star Sirius, that can be seen at mid-day, that give bright band spectra; all these marvellous apparitions are the third bodies, the cosmic sparks struck from grazing suns, generally dead suns, whilst the two suns pursue their journey scarred by the conflict. These luminous scars add complexity to the spectrum, but the bright spectrum itself is due to the new body, to the parts struck from each that coalesced into a body ten thousand times the temperature of our hottest furnace. It is an explosion a score of thousand times the power of dynamite. A new star is the amazing flash of this tremendous explosion, and as it is blown to isolated atoms, it disappears. It is flaming gas, hence it gives a bright band spectra.

Yet it is this very newly-formed body that Sir Robert Ball and all other astronomers have missed, so casually have they read the books, pamphlets, letters and papers I have sent to them.—I am, etc.,