Are the Planets Inhabited? Part 5

But it would seem that life both of plants and animals, under such conditions, might flourish and be abundant. The mean temperature would not, in general, be high enough to drive off the water as steam, nor low enough to congeal it into ice; it would remain water--water that flows.

But there is still a possible hindrance to life on Venus, a hindrance that actually exists in the case of Mercury.

Mercury, the "Twinkler," is not an easy object in our Northern lat.i.tudes, but, in countries near the tropics, is often quite conspicuous, a little scintillating gem of light in the bright sky, before sunrise or after sunset. In the telescope it is not so attractive as Venus, partly because it is smaller, partly because, though it receives more than three times as much light from the Sun, it is duller in hue. Yet it is not quite so secretive as its neighbour, and a certain number of markings have been detected upon its disc, markings which, like those of the Moon, appear to be permanent.

A glance at the Table will show that this was to be expected. In size, Mercury comes between the Moon and Mars, and the atmospheric veil ought therefore to be, as it evidently is, very slight and transparent; offering little or no hindrance to an observer scanning it from another world. The other necessary consequences of small size and ma.s.s will follow; the feeble force of gravitation, the languid atmospheric circulation, the extreme range of temperatures, the low temperature at which water will boil.

But the heat to which Mercury is exposed far transcends our terrestrial experience. In the mean it receives nearly seven times as much heat from the Sun as the Earth does, but this supply is not maintained uniformly, for Mercury moves round the Sun in a very eccentric orbit, so that when in aphelion it receives, surface for surface, only about four times as much heat as the Earth, but some six weeks later when in perihelion it receives more than eleven times. The great range of temperature due to the thinness of the atmosphere must therefore be further increased by the varying distance of the planet from the Sun.

A reference to Prof. Poynting's figures shows that the mean temperature of Mercury must approximate to 194 C., while water will boil at 40 C. or even lower. Here, then, is a condition the exact reverse of Mars. Water as a liquid will be rare on Mercury, not because it is congealed, but because it is evaporated; on the dark side of the planet it may, indeed, pa.s.s into ice, but on the side exposed to the Sun it must exist normally as a const.i.tuent of the atmosphere. Water in a liquid state, water that flows, must be almost unknown.

But we have good reason to believe that that which is the dark side of Mercury at one time is always dark; that which is exposed to the Sun is always exposed to it.

Since Mercury wears no concealing veil of atmosphere, and displays markings that can be identified and followed, a surprising circ.u.mstance has come to light. In 1889, Schiaparelli discovered that Mercury, instead of rotating on its axis in about 24 hours like the Earth and Mars, rotates in 88 days; that is to say, it always turns the same face towards the Sun, just as the Moon turns the same face towards the Earth. This fact, confirmed theoretically by Prof. G. H. Darwin in his development of the theory of tidal friction, puts the condition of Mercury in quite a new light. No alternation of day or night refreshes and restores the little world; one hemisphere is for ever exposed to the blasting heat of the Sun, seven times hotter for it than for the Earth; the other hemisphere is for ever exposed to the darkness and cold of outer s.p.a.ce, a range from something like 390 C. above freezing-point, to 270 C. below. It is true that between the two hemispheres there is a "debatable land," for, owing to the ellipticity of the orbit, the face turned to the Sun is not exactly the same at all times, and a region about 47 in width on each side of the planet, that is to say, rather more than a quarter of its entire surface, has one day and one night in each period of 88 days, but these more favoured sections can scarcely be considered more habitable than the rest.

The conditions of Mercury are so unfavourable for life that, even if this remarkable relation of rotation period to revolution did not hold good, it would still be impossible to regard it as a world for habitation. But its case shows that a further condition of habitability has to be satisfied by a planet. Size and distance from the Sun afford the first two conditions; a suitable rotation period is now seen to be a third.

And it is possible that in this very particular Venus fails to qualify.

Schiaparelli, the first observer of his time, a.s.sisted by the clear Italian sky, believed that he had demonstrated that Venus, like Mercury, rotates once in her year; her day being thus equal in length to 225 of ours, and the face that she turns to the Sun being always the same.

And in her case this statement requires practically no qualification, for, her orbit being nearly circular, there is hardly any libration; a place that has the Sun in its zenith has it so for ever; one on the night side of Venus can never have a sunrise, or gladden in the daylight. The side exposed to the Sun will wither in a temperature of about 227 C., in which all moisture will be evaporated; the side remote from it will be bound in eternal ice. In neither hemisphere will water exist in the liquid state; in neither hemisphere will life be possible.

But as yet the evidence is not conclusive that Venus has this long rotation period. Several observers of high rank believe that our neighbour rotates in nearly the same time as the Earth, but its markings are so faint and elusive that the problem is a difficult one. The spectroscopic method of determining the speed of rotation has been equally indecisive.

Until, therefore, the rotation period has been decided, the habitability of Venus must remain in question. If it always turns the same face to the Sun, there can be no more life upon it than upon Mercury; if on the contrary it rotates in much the same time as the Earth, then, so far as we know, it may well be a habitable world. Whether it is actually inhabited is a matter at present entirely beyond our knowledge.

A page or two back we touched lightly on the eccentricity of the orbit of Mercury--lightly, because it was not the chief factor in disabling the planet for habitation. But the condition introduced by this eccentricity is one which of itself would be sufficient to put it out of court. In the six weeks in which Mercury moves from aphelion to perihelion, it approaches the Sun by fourteen millions of miles, and the heat received by it is increased 2-1/2 times. Then, in the next six weeks, it recedes as far, and there is a like diminution. In other words, six weeks makes a greater proportional change in this one planet's condition than we should experience if our Earth were transported from its own orbit to that of Mars.

But there are other members of the solar system whose orbits are so elongated that that of Mercury seems in comparison almost circular. These are the comets, some of which all but graze the surface of the Sun at perihelion, and then recede from him for periods that it takes even thousands of years to complete. But without dwelling on such extreme cases, two of the best known of the periodic comets may be taken as examples of the rest. Encke's is the comet of shortest period, returning in about 33 years. At perihelion it is 31 millions of miles from the Sun; one-third the distance of the Earth. It receives, therefore, at this part of its...o...b..t, 9 times as much light and heat as the Earth. But at aphelion it retreats deep into the region of the asteroids, and is much more than four times the mean distance of the Earth. At this part of its...o...b..t it receives but 1/17th as much heat as the Earth. By far the most famous of all the comets is that known by the name of Halley, and its mean period is 76 years. At perihelion it comes within the orbit of Venus; indeed, nearly halfway between that and the orbit of Mercury. At aphelion it recedes to thirty-five times the distance of the Earth, far beyond the orbit of Neptune. The range in its light and heat from the Sun is from 3 times that of the Earth to less than 1/1200th; or, in other words, the supply of heat at one time is nearly 4000 times that at another, and of the 76 years of its period, only 80 days are spent within the orbit of the Earth.

Comets cannot be homes of life; they are not sufficiently condensed; indeed, they are probably but loose congeries of small stones. But even if comets were of planetary size it is clear that life could not be supported on them; water could not remain in the liquid state on a world that rushed from one such extreme of temperature to another.

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there are scattered an untold number of little planets commonly known as asteroids or minor planets.

Minor planets indeed they are, for the one first discovered--Ceres-- probably outweighs all the rest, known and unknown, put together, though something like 700 have already been detected, and the list grows at the rate of about one a week.

As the Table shows, Ceres is so small that the Earth exceeds it in volume 5000 times; even the Moon is 90 times as large. The ma.s.s of Ceres is not known; being so small, its density is probably less than that of the Moon, so that the Earth may easily outweigh it 10,000 times. The unfavourable conditions resulting from smallness of size that the Moon presents are therefore exaggerated exceedingly in the case of Ceres; its atmosphere must approach in tenuity what we should regard as a vacuum in a terrestrial laboratory, and water as a liquid be entirely unknown. Its distance from the Sun is another hostile factor; for in consequence it receives per unit of surface only 13 per cent of the light and heat that falls on the Earth; its maximum temperature under a zenith Sun will fall far below freezing-point, the minimum on the dark side will approach the absolute zero.

With Ceres the whole of the asteroidal family can be dismissed as possible abodes of life. No astronomer can regard them as such. Yet they have their lesson to teach. Life can exist on the Earth only on the upper face of its crust, and in a very thin film of air and water; but the enormous solid bulk within, inert though it be, that supports the stage on which the great drama of life is played, is as really essential as air and water themselves. If that bulk were much smaller and less ma.s.sive life could find no place upon its surface.

CHAPTER X

THE MAJOR PLANETS

It is a striking change to pa.s.s from Ceres, the giant of the minor planets, to Jupiter, the giant of the major planets. Instead of a world that the Earth exceeds in volume 5000 times, we are confronted by one that exceeds the Earth 1400 times. Ceres, when viewed through a large telescope, is just able to present a perceptible disc; Jupiter offers the largest shown by any heavenly body after the Sun and Moon.

And that disc is one that never fails to charm the attentive student, for it abounds in colour, movement and change. The late Prof. James Keeler, an observer of the first rank, having the advantage of observing the planet from the summit of Mt. Hamilton and with the great 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory, thus describes the aspect of the planet in 1889.

"Seen with this instrument on a fine night, the disc of Jupiter was a most beautiful object, covered with a wealth of detail which could not possibly be accurately represented in a drawing.... Scarcely any portion of Jupiter, except the Red Spot and the extreme polar regions, was of a uniform tint, the surface being mottled with flocculent and more or less irregular cloud ma.s.ses.... The equatorial zone, occupying the s.p.a.ce between the red belts, was marked in the centre by a salmon-coloured stripe, which was occasionally interrupted by an extension of the white clouds on the sides of the zone. The edges were brilliant white, and were formed of rounded cloud-like ma.s.ses, which at certain places extended into the red belts as long streamers....

Near their junction with the equatorial zone, the streamers were white and definite in outline, but they became redder in tint toward their outer extremities, and more diffuse, until they were lost in the general red colour of the background. When the seeing was good they were seen to be formed of irregular rounded or feathery clouds, fading toward the outer ends, until the structure could no longer be distinguished.... The portions of the equatorial zone surrounding the roots of well-marked streamers were somewhat brighter than at other places, and it is a curious circ.u.mstance that they were almost invariably suffused with a pale olive-green colour, which seemed to be a.s.sociated with great disturbance, and which was rarely seen elsewhere.... The red belts presented on all occasions the appearance of a pa.s.sive medium, in which the phenomena of the streamers and other forms ... were manifested. The phenomena would be exactly reproduced by streamers of cloudy white matter floating in a semi-transparent reddish fluid, sometimes submerged and sometimes rising to the surface.... The dark spots frequently seen on the red belts usually occupied s.p.a.ces left by sharp turns in the streamers, and they were of the same colour as the belts, but deeper in tint, as if the fluid medium could be seen to a greater depth."[15]

In other words, Jupiter is a striped or banded planet, the bands lying along the direction of turning. These bands are coloured in varying tints, and the planet rotates very rapidly, for the details in the bands pa.s.s quickly from one limb to the other. And not only is the speed of rotation of the whole very rapid--Jupiter turns about its axis in a little less than ten hours, so that a particle at its equator moves through 466 miles in each minute--but the various items that form the bands rotate in different times. They may also alter their form and their colour. Jupiter seems, then, to be a planet with a great and rapidly changing atmosphere that extends above a sh.o.r.eless sea formed of some liquified substance or substances--the whole in a state of flux.

But if we turn back to the Table, we see that Jupiter at its mean distance from the Sun is 52 times that of the Earth; that is to say, it receives only 1/27th of the light and heat that we receive. But in Chapter VIII, we learnt from Mars that as this receives only 3/7ths of the Earth's light and heat, its mean temperature would sink to -30C.; the Earth's being 16C. Mars is therefore almost always a frozen planet; frozen except on its mere surface when this is exposed to the full rays of the Sun. No sea there would ever be melted to a depth of more than a few inches, even at noonday in midsummer. And yet Mars has at least ten times the advantages of Jupiter. Jupiter, then, must be a frozen planet through and through; no liquid of any sort can exist on its surface; no vapour of any substance can exist in its atmosphere. It must be icebound even at its summer noonday.

Yet, from the description given by Prof. Keeler, it is manifestly not so; and another item in the Table emphasizes that it cannot be so. The density of the Sun is 14 that of water, Jupiter's is 133, showing that but a very small proportion (if any) of its bulk can be solid; the rest must be vaporous, or at least fluid. How then can we reconcile these inconsistencies?

It is in the dimensions of Jupiter that we find the answer. The ma.s.s of the planet is 317 times that of the Earth; it is indeed nearly three times as great as that of all the other planets put together. But the aggregation of so vast an amount of material is of itself a source of heat; the chief source at the present time of the enormous output of heat from the Sun is ascribed to its gradual contraction; the slow falling of its substance, if we may so express it, a little nearer to its centre. The great ma.s.s of Jupiter points to its inherent store of heat being much greater than that of any other planet. And of two bodies equally hot, the larger must cool more slowly than the smaller. If, therefore, all the members of the solar system had at one and the same moment possessed the same surface temperature, that equality would have ceased directly they began to radiate their heat into s.p.a.ce; the temperature of the smaller bodies falling more rapidly than those of the larger. This is another example of the principle that has already been noted, that the properties of a small world are not those of a large world divided by a constant factor. It is not possible to conceive a model of the solar system in which all the significant factors should be true to the same scale. If the diameters and distances were all made on a one-tenth scale, the surfaces would be one-hundredth of reality, the volumes one-thousandth.

But a radiating body radiates from its surface, while the store of heat from which that radiation is kept up is supplied by its volume. It follows, therefore, that a large and heavy world must differ from a small light world, not merely in scale, but also in kind.

The surface of a world is all that we see of it; it is, therefore, very commonly all that we consider. But unseen, and hence often unconsidered, beneath the surface lies its substance or ma.s.s, and it is this that determines the state and condition of the surface; it is the underlying power. Two men may be contending in a financial struggle; to the eye they may look alike, equally prosperous; both may have the same amount of money actually in their pockets; but the one has nothing else, the other has a great banking account and vast investments, and is, in fact, a millionaire; and it is his unseen power and resources that will make themselves felt.

Jupiter therefore introduces us to a new factor in world-condition; not all its heat is derived from the Sun; much is inherent to it. And though it is not possible at present to say that the ma.s.s of Jupiter being so much its inherent heat must be this or that quant.i.ty as a function of that ma.s.s, yet in general, and neglecting other considerations, we can say that of two worlds the one with the greater ma.s.s will be that with the higher inherent temperature. This factor of inherent temperature was one that did not require to be noticed in dealing with the Moon, or Venus, or Mars, for these and all the planets yet noticed are less in size, surface, volume, and ma.s.s than the Earth, and hence possess less inherent heat. It is only now that the greater planets are being considered that the question of a source of heat, other than the Sun, can arise.

But the evidence of such heat on Jupiter is not to be disputed. The albedo or reflective index of Jupiter has been put by the late Prof. G. Bond, of Harvard College Observatory, as higher than unity; in other words, that it emits more light than it receives. This is now generally regarded as an excessive estimate, but the albedo of the disc as a whole cannot be put lower than 072, or about that of white paper. But many of the "belts" or dark regions are of a dull copper tint, and the polar caps are dusky, so that Bond's estimate must be realized for the most brilliant "zones," as the brighter regions are called; certainly for the whitest of the white spots.

No direct evidence of inherent luminosity has been obtained, for the satellites disappear entirely in eclipse. But though their shadows in transit appear very dark, it is clear that they are not absolutely black, since sometimes such a shadow is not distinguishable in darkness from the satellite that casts it; a delicate proof that the background on which it falls has some intrinsic luminosity.

Unless there is the counteracting effect of a high temperature, the atmosphere of Jupiter would have a pressure at the surface of 104 lb. to the square inch, and the level of half pressure be attained at a mile and a quarter; the reverse condition to that on Mars would obtain, and the atmosphere of Jupiter would be much denser and much shallower than that of the Earth. Denser it probably is; shallower it cannot be, for the great white spots, each often five or six thousand miles in diameter, that range themselves at times along the equatorial regions till they look like the portholes of a s.h.i.+p, evidently rise from depths great even as compared with their size. But it is only by intense heat that the effect of the great ma.s.s of Jupiter in constricting its atmosphere within shallow depths can be overcome.

Again, the extraordinary lightness of the planet, so little above the density of water, points in the same direction. So, not less unmistakably, do the magnitude and rapidity of the atmospheric movements. The clouds and storms of our own atmosphere are worked by solar heat; solar heat it is that draws up the vapours and provides the chief part of the energy manifested in the speed and strength of the air-current. But solar heat can only give 1/27th the amount of that energy at the distance of Jupiter, so that, if they were entirely dependent on solar radiation, the winds of Jupiter should be very feeble.

Further, the difference of presentment due to the difference of lat.i.tude is a fruitful cause of inequalities of temperature and pressure in the terrestrial atmosphere. But as a degree of lat.i.tude on Jupiter is eleven times as wide as on the Earth, such inequalities connected with a given difference in lat.i.tude are spread over eleven times the distance that they would be on the Earth, and are, therefore, so much the less p.r.o.nounced.

Yet, across a gulf of 400 millions of miles we can clearly discern the bright zones of Jupiter now narrowing down and constricting the red belts, now thrust apart by them, and can detect changes taking place in an hour of time over areas equal to that of a terrestrial hemisphere.

A notable peculiarity of Jupiter is found in the proper motions of its spots. Many of the white spots are exceedingly swift, giving a rotation period of 9h. 50m. while the equatorial belt in general gives a period 5m.

longer; so that in 119 rotations (nearly 49 days) a white spot will have pa.s.sed entirely round the belt, gaining upon it at a rate of nearly 240 miles an hour.

The most famous of all the markings in Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, which became conspicuous in 1878, since when the spot itself, or at least the nest in which it lay, has always been visible. It has been identified with a great red spot observed by Hooke and Ca.s.sini in 1664-6, that appeared and vanished again eight times between 1665 and 1708. It therefore has had a history practically as long as our telescopic knowledge of the planet, and may be looked upon as in some sort a permanent feature. Yet that it is not in the nature of a portion of a solid crust is clear. It occupies on Jupiter much the position and relative area of Australia on the Earth, but whereas Australia of necessity rotates in one piece with all the other continents, the Great Red Spot has a rotation period which is neither that of the equatorial belt, nor of the quickly moving white spots, and is not itself stable. An "Australia on the loose" is impossible, even unthinkable here, but the Great Red Spot, for all its long duration, is mobile and inconstant, and is therefore no portion of a solid permanent crust.

The giant planet Jupiter, therefore, offers us an example of what we may call a "semi-sun"; a world still bubbling with tremendous energies of its own, still pulsing with its own inherent heat, still without a solid crust; probably without a solid nucleus, liquid or vaporous throughout.

Whatever the future may hold for such an orb, it is clearly no world for habitation at present. Full of colour, and movement, and change as it is, it lacks the Earth's "gloom of iron substance," which is necessary, no less than its veiling by the plant, as a stage for "the pa.s.sion and peris.h.i.+ng of mankind."

But if Jupiter be a semi-Sun, still a source of heat, perhaps even of light, can it yield the means of life to its satellites? For Jupiter is sun-like, not merely in its own condition, but also in that it is the centre and ruler of a system of its own. We know already of eight satellites revolving round it.

Of these eight, only four--the four discovered by Galileo, in the first days of his possession of a telescope--need be considered; the other four are of the same order of size as the asteroids, and are indeed much smaller than Ceres.

But the Galilean satellites are of a higher rank. Europa, the smallest, is in size a twin to the Moon; Callisto, the outermost, is almost exactly the size of Mercury; Io, the innermost, is midway between the two in its dimensions. But Ganymede, the largest, is almost comparable with Mars, its diameter being 045 that of the Earth instead of the 053 of Mars.

But the Moon, Mercury, and Mars have all been shown, on the ground of their small size, to be worlds unfit for habitation; the satellites of Jupiter are, therefore, all rejected on the same score. Nor can the greater nearness of their immediate primary compensate for their remoteness from the Sun. It is true that Jupiter presents to Ganymede a disc with more than 200 times the apparent area that the Sun presents to the Earth, but to make up for the falling-off of the solar radiation, each unit of this area should radiate about 1/250th as much heat as each unit of the Sun's surface. In other words, the absolute surface temperature of Jupiter should be 1/4th that of the Sun, or about 1550 C., and this is higher than can be admitted. The Sun and Jupiter together cannot put Ganymede in as favourable a position as Mars, much less as favourable as the Earth.

The case of Jupiter carries with it those of Saturn, Ura.n.u.s, and Neptune.

All three, from their high albedoes and low densities, are still in a vaporous condition; still in some sort, semi-Suns; sources of a certain amount of heat, and not recipients merely. The days are yet far distant when a solid crust can form on any one of them, and the water condense from the steamy atmosphere to form oceans, seas, and rivers. Not till then, if at all, when water as a liquid, water that flows, is present, can life begin to appear and enter on its long course of change.