There is always a too strong tendency to regard an
important new discovery and the theories and speculations based upon
it as revolutionizing knowledge, and displacing or overthrowing
everything that went before. Upon the plea that ``Laplace only made a
guess'' more recent guesses have been driven to extremes and treated
by injudicious exponents as ``the solid facts at last.''
Before considering more recent theories than Laplace's, let us see
what the nature of the photographic revelations is. The vast celestial
maelstrom discovered by Lord Rosse in the ``Hunting Dogs'' may be
taken as the leading type of the spiral nebul?, although there are
less conspicuous objects of the kind which, perhaps, better illustrate
some of their peculiarities. Lord Rosse's nebula appears far more
wonderful in the photographs than in his drawings made with the aid of
his giant reflecting telescope at Parsonstown, for the photographic
plate records details that no telescope is capable of showing. Suppose
we look at the photograph of this object as any person of common sense
would look at any great and strange natural phenomenon. What is the
first thing that strikes the mind? It is certainly the appearance of
violent whirling motion. One would say that the whole glowing mass had
been spun about with tremendous velocity, or that it had been set
rotating so rapidly that it had become the victim of ``centrifugal
force,'' one huge fragment having broken loose and started to gyrate
off into space.
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