V.3 No 1

19

Chapter 1. Hypotheses of the Earth origin

Chapter 1. Hypotheses of the Earth origin

Abstract

In the first chapter we carry out a brief analysis, how the idea of structure, formation and evolution of the Solar system and the Earth developed from the deep antiquity up to the modern conceptions by Schmidt, Atsukovsky, Ambartsumyan, Hayashi. We deduce that the principal problems of conceptions are insufficient substantiation of factors predetermining the origin and formation of planet and planet system and incomplete analysis of conditions of its evolution. We conclude necessary to carry out more rigorous and covering substantiation of phenomenology of origin and formation of protoplanet nebula on the basis of conventional knowledge of the stellar matter evolution in metagalaxy.

Keywords: cosmogony, cosmology, history of science.

Classification by PASC: 01.30.Rr; 01.65.+g; 91.35.Cb; 96.10.+i.

I would actually like much, people to know that this small what I got to know is almost nothing if comparing with what I don't know and what I'm hoping on to study. They who step-by-step discover the truth in the science are alike those who, becoming richer, spends less labour for more acquisition that they spent before for well less, when they were poor. I would compare them with some military leader whose power increases as they gain the victories and who need more skill to stand firm after defeat than to seize towns and provinces. Because to strive in overwhelming all difficulties and delusions preventing us in achieving the truth cognition is actually the same as giving a battle, and to make a wrong opinion as to some important and general subject is the same as to be defeated; one needs after to be more skilled to recover and to take a previous position than one needed to achieve great success, when quite substantiated principles were available.

R. Descartes. Consideration about the method, part 6

The first models of the world are known from the Indo-Iranian mythology. "There relates, specifically, the having come to us in later statement but undoubtedly archaic cosmogony, according to which, the arisen within the 'infinite' igneous unit begins inhaling the surrounding emptiness (air?) and, spawning, gives the birth of all numbers and things (the first prototype of gravity and accretion forces - Authors.). We should attribute to the same heritage the system of oppositions among which the pair 'limit - unlimited' had a predominant part" [1, p. 16].

From the deeps of millenniums reached us the mythologised interpretations of unknown Indo-Iranian authors representing the universe as a "world ovum" (concentric celestial spheres having common nature but different functions of substance).

Some later than Greeks and at the same time as they, Indians and Chinese developed a whole series of theories of eternal and infinite world, non-empty space consisting of four varieties of atoms "of which four elements of nature - earth, water, fire and air - are created; all atoms are combinable… Atoms are eternal, indivisible, created by no one and non-destroyable" (Ajvica, [2, p. 9]). Locayata (the Charvaca's teaching recorded in Veda) adds to them a fifth element - aether: "Elements are eternal and invariable. All properties of things depend on, combination of which elements they are, and on proportion of them in combination… Some texts contain the idea of evolution" [2, p. 245].

In Greece, the landmark was Anaximander's (about 610- 546 B. C.) cosmogony. "Anaximander showed the world origin as the fight and separation of oppositions, first of all of heat and coldness… In the depths of infinite origin there arises as if an embryo of future world in which the moist and cold nucleus appears surrounded with the fiery shell. Under affection of heat of this shell, the moist nucleus gradually dries out, and the oozing out vapour inflate the shell, finally it bursts and separated into a series of rings… As an outcome of these processes the dense Earth origins…" [1, p. 11]. Anaximander thought the source of all existing being some eternal and unlimited origin [1, p. 11] in which the unity and fight of oppositions give rise to cosmos [2, p. 15], and the origin and evolution of the world - being a periodically repeating process [1, p. 12]. Anaximander was the first who formulated the matter conservation law [2, p. 15]. "Of course, Anaximander's world system is yet not mathematics, nor the scientific astronomy, this is yet the mythologem, but the mythologem that gave rise to the mathematical astronomy" [3, p. 11].

Perhaps we have to consider as the first endeavour to explain the cosmological driving force the theory by Empidocles from Acragant (490- 430 B. C.) [4]. "The Empidocles' theory is grounded on the conception of four elements which he names 'the roots of all things'… These are fire, air… water and soil. He calls these 'roots' eternal, invariable, they can neither arise from something else nor turn into each other… All other things are produced from combination of these elements… Besides these four elements, Empidocles has postulated existence of two forces, Love and Enmity" [1, p. 29], i.e., the attracting and repelling forces. When the system is stable, all elements and forces are in equilibrium everywhere, and Enmity can exist only at the periphery; the more the system loses its equilibrium, the more the elements are separated, and Love is pressed to the world centre. The disturbed equilibrium causes the world rotation, the more accelerated the more the equilibrium is disturbed. "When the Enmity predominated and fully separated the elements located as the concentric circumferences above each other, the rotation is maximally fast, it decelerates as the Love that compressed within the world centre begins to overwhelm and mixes again the disjointed elements" [1, p. 29]. Thus, "The predominating of such or other force determines different stages of cyclically occurring evolution of the universe" [2, p. 562]. Empidocles was first who considered the world not as something given but in its evolution; moreover, he first stated the principle of evolution and natural selection of living creatures.

After Anaxagor (500- 428 B. C.), in the beginning of all, the space was filled by the mixture of infinitely large number of infinitesimal (in contemporary meaning) particles-elements. A small non-uniformity of the initial distribution of different-quality particles served the crystallisation nuclei ('seeds') for creation of everything existing by attracting the alike particles, and the reason of vortex rotation of the substance which caused the celestial bodies creation [2, p. 15]. He also said the Sun being a scorching clod, i.e. an independent source of light (this 'seditious' idea almost cost him his life).

Before Pythagor (about 580- 500 B. C.) and Parmenide (about 540- 470 B. C.), it was thought that the world rotates around the Earth. "In the end of V century B. C. the Pythagoreist Phylolay published a distinctive world system in which besides five planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - around the 'central fire' there rotated also the Sun, Moon, Earth and so-called counter-Earth" [1, p. 16], which has been added for the sake of yielding 10, a sacred number for Pythagoreans. The Earth of Phylolay was spherical, but the Sun only reflected the light of Gestia, central divine fire of the Universe.

In such system the trajectories of celestial bodies motion are extremely complicated and hardly explainable, so a few next centuries Eudoxy Cnidean (408- 355 B. C.), Kalipp from Kizik (370- 300 B. C.), Aristotle (384- 322 B. C.) [5, 6], Ptolemy (90- 160 A. D.) [7] and many their followers developed a layer of cosmogonic conceptions - attempts to reconcile (so called 'rescuing of the observed phenomena') by representing the geocentric world system with the help of dozens of concentrically enclosed spheres, expanding the complicated planetary motion into the component circular motions, as it was described, in particular, in [3, p. 22- 23].