They seem to be successive stages, and to reveal to us
the origin of our planets. The position of each planet in our
solar system would be determined by the chance position of the
denser stuff shot out by the erupting sun. I have seen Vesuvius
hurl up into the sky, amongst its blasts of gas and steam,
white-hot masses of rock weighing fifty tons. In the far fiercer
outburst of the erupting sun there would be at least thinner and
denser masses, and they must have been hurled so far into space
that their speed in travelling round the central body, perhaps
seconded by the attraction of the second star, overcame the
gravitational pull back to the centre. Recollect the force which,
in the new star in Perseus, drove masses of hydrogen for millions
of miles at a speed of a thousand miles a second.
These denser nuclei or masses would, when the eruption was over,
begin to attract to themselves all the lighter nebulous material
within their sphere of gravitational influence. Naturally, there
would at first be a vast confusion of small and large centres of
condensation in the arms of the nebula, moving in various
directions, but a kind of natural selection--and, in this case,
survival of the biggest--would ensue.
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