Excerpt from Wellington College Natural Science Society, 1900

Laplace's theory still ofl'ers in its essential features the best explanation that can be given of the development of our system, and some of the difiiculties encountered in its original presenta tion have been considerably modified. But Professor G. H. Darwin has also shown that our own moon was probably broken ofi from the earth in a different way perhaps by the enormous disturbance that would have been produced when the earth's rate of rotation was such that gravitation would only just hold it together, and the period of the solar tidal wave was nearly the same as that of a free oscillation of the whole mass. The moon has been brought to its present distance from the earth by the action of the tides it has generated on the earth, and the fact that it always presents the same face to us is probably due to the action of tides raised on the moon by the earth. The planets themselves are too small as compared with the sun to have had their distances from the sun sensibly affected by the same cause, they must have been formed nearly at their present distances, and the same may be said with regard to their satellites. The solar tidal friction, however, probably accounts for the absence of satellites to the interior planets. The titles reduced the rotation so rapidly that it never rose high enough to necessitate the rupture of a ring.

Darwin and Poincaré have also considered further the con ditions under which a rotating fluid mass may break up into two pieces, and See has suggested that we here find an explanation of the manner in which double stars were formed, whilst the further action of tidal friction accounts for the eccentricity or ovalness of their orbits. He also finds in Sir John Herschel's drawings of double nebula evidence that this process of rupture is going on under our observation.

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