Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1874 — The Planets of Our System. [ARTICLE]

The Planets of Our System.

Astronomical science is making rapid progress. Men make the study of the starry heavens their life-work, and starting where those of preceding generations left off, and aided by more and more perfect optical instruments, are discovering profounder wonders in that vast department of the works of God Ilian any of which Newton or the elder Herschcl ever dreamed. It is right that Christians should think of these things and learn what they can of them. 'David “considered” God’s heavens and the doing of it inspired his devotion and deepened his humility. Let us, then, for a little turn our attention—not to the far-off fixed stars which we know to be other suns, but so distant that we can discover nothing new—but .to our near neighbors, the planets of our own sun, members of our own family. Of Mercury, which is so near the sun as to be always in a blaze of light, but little is known, except that it is much less in bulk than the earth, and very considerably more dense. Whether it is an abode ot animal life is a problem which mortal men will probably never solve. Venus is very nearly the size of the earth, and has a day within a few minutes of the same length. It has water, as the earth has, because its sky has an abundance of clouds. That it has vegetable and animal life is highly probable, because all the conditions necessary for such life appear to exist, and it may be that there are beings there capable of knowing and worshipihg God. This, howeve'r, to the inhabitants of .the earth must ever be a matter of mere conjecture. But what we cannot know just now we shall know hereafter. Of the earth we need not speak other than to say that it is the third in the series of the planets, and is the first of the series that is attended by a satellite. Mars is much smaller than the earth, but in other respects very much like it. It has seas and clouas, and during its winters extensive tracts of snow can be seen. Its seas are much narrower than the ocean of this globe, and more numerous. They are more like the Mediterranean Sea. Its continents are more broken up, but whether there are mountains cannot be determined. It is highly probable that vegetables and animals exist in Mars, and that the" seasons very much resemble those on earth. Between Mars and the next great seines, of which Jupiter is the first and largest, there are perhaps hundreds, possibly thousands, of little bodies called asteroids, more than a hundred of which have been discovered and named, but of which nothing more is known or can be known than that they exist, and have their own proper orbits more or less eccentric. Some of them are so small that their entire surface would not equal some of our countries. It is probable that they are like our own moon, nothing but barren rock. The notion expressed by some that they are the fragments of an exploded planet is no longer entertained by men of science. But the broad track of the asteroids separates between two great families of planets, the first or inner system consisting of Mercury, Venus, the earth (with its moon) and Mars; the outer system made up of the tour great planets—Jupiter,with four satellites; Saturn, with its rings and seven satellites; Uranus and Neptune. The first four may all be the abode of life, as we know one of them to be; but recent careful observation shows that Jupiter, the giant of the entire planetary system, is not yet in a condition to admit of the existence of life of any kind. The remoteness of the other three renders any observation of their present condition well-nigh impossible with the best instrument yet made; but from all that can be observed it is believed that none of them have arrived at a condition fitting them for life of any kind. The diameter of Jupiter is more than ten times that of the earth, and has a volume exceeding hers 1,230 times. But while the density of the earth is nearly six times that of water, that es Jupiter is barely one and a third times that of water. It follows, therefore, that what we can see through a telescope is not the solid body of the planet, but the surface of a vast and vapory atmosphere thousands of miles deep. The amount of matter in Jupiter is about three hundred times that of the earth, and about one hundred times greater than ail the planets combined. We may well suppoo« that so vast a globe is the theater of tremendous forces. Tne cloud| Jupiter are arranged in belts, running parallel with the equator, but undergoing frequent changes both in width and color. During the year 1860 a yift in one of these clouds behaved in such a way as to demonstrate the startling fact that a hurricane was raging over an extent of the territory of the planet equaling the .whole surface of our earth at a rate of fully iuO miles per hour. Such a hurricane on our earth would destroy every tree and building in the territory over which it raged, and cause universal desolation. It raged six w eeks. 8o great is the diurnal velocity of Jupiter that it makes an entire revolution in a little less than ten hours, carrying the surface at the equator at the rate of seven and one-half miles per “ From the riaiug of the sun to the setting thereof” is but five hours. This great vfdocity has flattened its poles correspoodingly, so that its equatorial diafnemeter exceeds its polar diameter by 7,000 miles. Appearances indicate the presence of yery much water in Jupiter, that is, in its atmosphere; for it is almost certain that none is yet lying, upon its surface in sfeas and oceans, for the Creator has not yet “divided the waters which were under the immanent from the waters which were above the firmament,” and then, as Moses has written, “ the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Then a vast and dense atmosphere, like that of Jupiter at present, enveloped the globe, and then the Spirit of God moved in fearful hurricanes upon the face of the waters, like that storm in Jupiter just spoken of. Thus permitted to see in another planet something of the energy of the Almighty mentioned in the first eight verses of the first chapter of Genesis; and thus is science made to interpret one of the profoundest and most difficult passages in revelation, j

Jupiter is yet red hot, “for, daring the last two or three years, a change of so remarkable a nature has passed over it as to imply the existence of forces more energetic than those at work in producing atmospheric changes.” In the autumn of 1870 Mr. Browning, an eminent optician and observer, “ called the attention of astronomers to the fact that the great equatorial zone, usually of a creamy white color, had assumed a decidedly orange tintand that “ the bright edges of the belts bordering upon this rudely equatorial zone seemea to he frayed and torn like the edges of storm clouds.” Our quotations .are from the Cornhill Magazine. It has been demonstrated that the light which reaches the earth from Jupiter is more than the reflected light of the sun could give, therefore some of it must be inherent. Another observation was upon the moons of Jupiter as they passed over the illuminated disc of the planet, themselves equally exposed to the shining of the sun. The result was that the satellite seemed almost black when it was upon the middle of the planet’s disc, as a cokl iron .ball would look if swinging across the face of a mass of molten iron. Here wehave intense heat, some light and a vast investiture of watery clouds. We say watery clouds. We say watery, for the spectroscope has proved that there is water there. Is Jupiter cooling, as our globe probably did in ages long past? Its enormous size requires for that process a correspondingly enormous period; but the time will come—it may he millions of years in the future—when the waters will lie upon its surface, when plants can spring up, and animals, and, it may be, intelligent, worshiping beings, shall cover the face of that immense w’orliL In all this we have dealt only with observed facts, and with legitimate £»ets. Mere speculations and guesses are foolish and unprofitable; but to know all we can know of the works of God is a duty and a privilege. That creative energy is still going on, and will go on forever, is a proposition which we may read in the heavens above us, and which the Scriptures of Truth do not either expressly affirm or deny.— United Presbyterian.