Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/270

230 this. When we enclose a gas in a cooler vessel, the molecules bombard the sides more than they are bombarded back. In consequence, they lose energy; as we say, are cooled. But in free air if a molecule be fortunate enough to elude its neighbors, there is nothing to take away its motion but the ether through radiation, and this is a very slow process. Thus the escaping fugitive must arrive at the confines of the air with the speed it had at its last encounter. We reach, then, this result: In space there is no such thing as temperature; temperature being simply the aggregate effect of molecular temperament. The reason we should consider it uncommonly cold up there is that fewer molecules would strike us. Quantity, therefore, in our estimation replaces quality,—a possible substitution which also accounts for some reputations, literary or otherwise. The only forces which could affect this lonely molecule would be the heating by the Sun, the repellent force of light, and gravity.

Now the speed which gravity on the Earth can control is 6.9 miles a second. It can impart this to a body falling freely to it from infinite space, and can therefore annul it on the way up, and no more. If, then, any of the molecules reach the outer boundary of the air going at more than this speed, they will pass beyond the Earth's power to restrain. They will become little rovers in space on their own account, and dart off on