Book contents
- Frontmatter
- EDITOR'S PREFACE
- PREFACE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I BELIEFS AND SUPERSTITIONS RELATIVE TO COMETS
- CHAPTER II COMETARY ASTRONOMY UP TO THE TIME OF NEWTON
- CHAPTER III THE MOTIONS AND ORBITS OF COMETS
- CHAPTER IV PERIODICAL COMETS
- CHAPTER V PERIODICAL COMETS
- CHAPTER VI THE WORLD OF COMETS AND COMETARY SYSTEMS
- CHAPTER VII PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF COMETS
- CHAPTER VIII PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF COMETS
- CHAPTER IX MASS AND DENSITY OF COMETS
- CHAPTER X THE LIGHT OF COMETS
- CHAPTER XI THEORY OF COMETARY PHENOMENA
- CHAPTER XII COMETS AND SHOOTING STARS
- CHAPTER XIII COMETS AND THE EARTH
- CHAPTER XIV PHYSICAL INFLUENCES OF COMETS
- CHAPTER XV SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT COMETS
- SECTION I ARE COMETS HABITABLE?
- SECTION II WHAT WOULD BECOME OF THE EARTH IF A COMET WERE TO MAKE IT ITS SATELLITE?
- SECTION III IS THE MOON AN ANCIENT COMET?
- I ELLIPTIC ELEMENTS OF THE RECOGNISED PERIODICAL COMETS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
- II GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE ORBITS OF COMETS
- Plate section
SECTION I - ARE COMETS HABITABLE?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- EDITOR'S PREFACE
- PREFACE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I BELIEFS AND SUPERSTITIONS RELATIVE TO COMETS
- CHAPTER II COMETARY ASTRONOMY UP TO THE TIME OF NEWTON
- CHAPTER III THE MOTIONS AND ORBITS OF COMETS
- CHAPTER IV PERIODICAL COMETS
- CHAPTER V PERIODICAL COMETS
- CHAPTER VI THE WORLD OF COMETS AND COMETARY SYSTEMS
- CHAPTER VII PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF COMETS
- CHAPTER VIII PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF COMETS
- CHAPTER IX MASS AND DENSITY OF COMETS
- CHAPTER X THE LIGHT OF COMETS
- CHAPTER XI THEORY OF COMETARY PHENOMENA
- CHAPTER XII COMETS AND SHOOTING STARS
- CHAPTER XIII COMETS AND THE EARTH
- CHAPTER XIV PHYSICAL INFLUENCES OF COMETS
- CHAPTER XV SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT COMETS
- SECTION I ARE COMETS HABITABLE?
- SECTION II WHAT WOULD BECOME OF THE EARTH IF A COMET WERE TO MAKE IT ITS SATELLITE?
- SECTION III IS THE MOON AN ANCIENT COMET?
- I ELLIPTIC ELEMENTS OF THE RECOGNISED PERIODICAL COMETS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
- II GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE ORBITS OF COMETS
- Plate section
Summary
The inhabitants of comets as depicted in the Plurality des Mondes of Fontenelle– Ideas of Lambert respecting the habitability of comets–That comets are the abode of human beings is a hypothesis incompatible with the received facts of astronomy.
After Newton, and especially in the eighteenth century, by a not unnatural reaction of ideas from the Aristotelian doctrine of transient meteors, comets were regarded as bodies, stable and permanent as the planets ; they were obedient to the same laws of movement, and differed only as regards appearance, by their nebulosities and tails. The astronomers of that time, taken up with the verification and calculation of their positions and orbits, occupied themselves little or not at all with the study of details which were purely physical, such as are now called cometary phenomena. Regarding them as spheroids, solid like the planets, and similar to them in the constituents of their nuclei, to people them with inhabitants followed in the natural sequence of ideas.
Fontenelle, who, as we know, was a believer in the theory of vortices, and who, moreover, regarded the heads and tails of comets as simple optical appearances, thus expresses himself in the Pluralité des Mondes.
‘ Comets,’ he observes, ‘ are planets which belong to a neighbouring vortex ; they move near the boundaries of it ; but this vortex, being unequally pressed upon by those that are adjacent to it, is rounder above and flatter below, and it is the part below that concerns us.
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- The World of Comets , pp. 517 - 522Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1877