Life's Place in the Cosmos

by Hiram Percy Maxim, 1933



PLUTO

Pluto has only just been located. He was not discovered until 1930, although the late Percival Lowell predicted its existence some 25 years ago. But Pluto has been very difficult to find because he is even smaller than our Earth, is 3r7oo millions of miles out from the Sun, and shines only with extremely faint light reflected from the Sun.

We know almost nothing about Pluto. He is nearly 40 times as far from the Sun as we are and receives only one sixteen-hundredth part of the warmth that we do. His year is 248 of our years. He must be down close to the temperature of interstellar space, which is very close to absolute zero, the point at which all molecular motion ceases.

We do not know whether there are yet other bodies that revolve around our Sun out beyond Pluto. They must be smaller than Pluto if there are any, since they could be formed only from the first or the last wisp of incandescent gas that was pulled out of the ancestral Sun as the great wanderer approached in the long ago, just as Mercury is the last or the first wisp pulled out as the great stranger departed and went his mysterious way. At the point where he was nearest the Sun, he pulled out the largest quantities of gas and this is why the middle planets, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, are the largest.



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