Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 5

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Astronomical Society of the Pacific., 1893

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Page 117 - Institution, the income from a part of which was to be devoted to "the increase and diffusion of more exact knowledge in regard to the nature and properties of atmospheric air in connection with the welfare of man.
Page 21 - ... them to escape. Their velocity would have to be much greater than it ever can be if they could dart away from the sun as they have done from the earth. It is not, therefore, surprising to find hydrogen in the solar atmosphere. In a similar manner we can explain the abundance with which the atmospheres of other massive suns like Sirius or Vega seem to be charged with hydrogen. The attraction of these vast globes is sufficiently potent to retain even an atmosphere of this subtle element.
Page 27 - ... possible with a larger globe, like the earth. The sea is constantly wearing down the land, but, by upheavals arising from the intensely heated condition of the interior of our globe, the land is still able to maintain itself above the water. It can, however, hardly be doubted that if our earth had so far cooled that the upheavals had either ceased or were greatly reduced the water would greatly encroach on the land. On a small globe like Mars the cooling of the interior has so far advanced that...
Page 21 - Mars may be expected to be encompassed with an atmosphere. Our telescopic observations completely bear this out. It is perfectly certain that there is a certain shell of gaseous material investing Mars. This is shown in various ways. We note the gradual obscuration of objects on the planet as they approach the edge of the disk, where they are necessarily viewed through a greatly increased thickness of Martian atmosphere.
Page 28 - But no Brobdingnagian's arms would be mighty enough to wave the flag on Mars which we should be able to see here. No building that we could raise, even were it a hundred times more massive than the Great Pyramid, would be discernible by the Martian astronomer, even had he the keenest eyes and the most potent telescopes of which our experience has given us any conception.
Page 25 - Mars were traversed by long, dark "canals," as he called them. They must have been each at least sixty miles wide, and in some cases they were thousands of miles in length. Notwithstanding the dimensions to which these figures correspond, the detection of the Martian canals indicates one of the utmost refinements of astronomical observation. The fact that they are so difficult to see may be taken as an illustration of what I have already said as to the hopelessness of discerning any object on this...
Page 18 - ... the globe if it were devoid of such protection. Again, at night, the atmospheric covering serves to screen us from the cold that would otherwise be the consequence of unrestricted radiation from the earth to space. It is, therefore, obvious that the absence of a copious atmosphere, though perhaps not absolutely incompatible with life of some kind, must still necessitate types of life of a wholly different character from those with which we are familiar.
Page 171 - I deliberately put aside all teaching of theory, because it seemed to me high time that the facts should be examined by a purely inductive process ; that the nugatory results of all attempts to detect the existence of the Eulerian period...
Page 229 - Science Monthly. D, APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, and 5 Bond Street, New York. Scientific Publications. GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OP MUSCLES AND NERVES. By Dr. I. ROSENTHAL, Professor of Physiology at the University of Erlangen. With seventy-five Woodcuts. (" International Scientific Series.") 12mo, cloth, $1.50.
Page 24 - However, 1 am willing to leave the figure at this amount, only remembering that if I estimated the powers of the telescope less highly than these facts convey, the arguments on which I am entering would be correspondingly strengthened. As we have already said, Mars is at present at a distance of 35,000,000 miles, and if we look at it through a telescope of such a power as we have described, the apparent distance is reduced to one-thousandth part. In other words, all that the best telescope can possibly...

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