Chapter 5

CHAPTER V

THE ROMANCE OF THE MOON

An observer endued with an infinite range of vision, and placed
in that unknown center around which the entire world revolves,
might have beheld myriads of atoms filling all space during the
chaotic epoch of the universe. Little by little, as ages went
on, a change took place; a general law of attraction manifested
itself, to which the hitherto errant atoms became obedient:
these atoms combined together chemically according to their
affinities, formed themselves into molecules, and composed those
nebulous masses with which the depths of the heavens are strewed.
These masses became immediately endued with a rotary motion
around their own central point. This center, formed of
indefinite molecules, began to revolve around its own axis
during its gradual condensation; then, following the immutable
laws of mechanics, in proportion as its bulk diminished by
condensation, its rotary motion became accelerated, and these
two effects continuing, the result was the formation of one
principal star, the center of the nebulous mass.

By attentively watching, the observer would then have perceived
the other molecules of the mass, following the example of this
central star, become likewise condensed by gradually accelerated
rotation, and gravitating round it in the shape of innumerable stars.
Thus was formed the _Nebulae_, of which astronomers have reckoned
up nearly 5,000.

Among these 5,000 nebulae there is one which has received the
name of the Milky Way, and which contains eighteen millions of
stars, each of which has become the center of a solar world.

If the observer had then specially directed his attention to one
of the more humble and less brilliant of these stellar bodies,
a star of the fourth class, that which is arrogantly called the
Sun, all the phenomena to which the formation of the Universe is to
be ascribed would have been successively fulfilled before his eyes.
In fact, he would have perceived this sun, as yet in the gaseous
state, and composed of moving molecules, revolving round its axis
in order to accomplish its work of concentration. This motion,
faithful to the laws of mechanics, would have been accelerated
with the diminution of its volume; and a moment would have arrived
when the centrifugal force would have overpowered the centripetal,
which causes the molecules all to tend toward the center.

Another phenomenon would now have passed before the observer's
eye, and the molecules situated on the plane of the equator,
escaping like a stone from a sling of which the cord had
suddenly snapped, would have formed around the sun sundry
concentric rings resembling that of Saturn. In their turn,
again, these rings of