Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 05:33:00 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people
http://uscnews.sc.edu/ARCH190.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Meteorology By Aristotle

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Meteorology By Aristotle  (Read 2823 times)
0 Members and 87 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bathos
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 141



« Reply #15 on: August 30, 2009, 11:40:06 pm »

Part 7

We consider a satisfactory explanation of phenomena inaccessible to
observation to have been given when our account of them is free from
impossibilities. The observations before us suggest the following
account of the phenomena we are now considering. We know that the
dry and warm exhalation is the outermost part of the terrestrial world
which falls below the circular motion. It, and a great part of the
air that is continuous with it below, is carried round the earth by
the motion of the circular revolution. In the course of this motion
it often ignites wherever it may happen to be of the right consistency,
and this we maintain to be the cause of the 'shooting' of scattered
'stars'. We may say, then, that a comet is formed when the upper motion
introduces into a gathering of this kind a fiery principle not of
such excessive strength as to burn up much of the material quickly,
nor so weak as soon to be extinguished, but stronger and capable of
burning up much material, and when exhalation of the right consistency
rises from below and meets it. The kind of comet varies according
to the shape which the exhalation happens to take. If it is diffused
equally on every side the star is said to be fringed, if it stretches
out in one direction it is called bearded. We have seen that when
a fiery principle of this kind moves we seem to have a shooting-star:
similarly when it stands still we seem to have a star standing still.
We may compare these phenomena to a heap or mass of chaff into which
a torch is thrust, or a spark thrown. That is what a shooting-star
is like. The fuel is so inflammable that the fire runs through it
quickly in a line. Now if this fire were to persist instead of running
through the fuel and perishing away, its course through the fuel would
stop at the point where the latter was densest, and then the whole
might begin to move. Such is a comet-like a shooting-star that contains
its beginning and end in itself.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy