| During his career , Ball was involved in a number of controversial issues. The main ones were : The origin of Meteorites The origin of the Solar System The Existence of Vulcan The Martian Canals Meteorites, he believed were of earthly volcanic origin, ejected into orbit and later to fall again when their orbits converged. His theory was that in bygone eras, volcanoes were much higher, the atmosphere lower. and therefore the exit velocity of an object escaping from the earth’s gravity needed to be much less than it would be now. He believed that the entire Solar System was formed out of a spinning primordial fiery mist, similar to the Andromeda nebula. Of course at that time, objections to this hypothesis included the question of the outer moons of Neptune and Uranus, which had retrograde motion. The various nebula theories were almost as numerous as astronomers. In one of his many contributions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Ball states : “There is no difficulty in conceiving how a nebula, quite independently of any internal motion of its parts, shall also have had as a whole a movement of rotation. In fact a little consideration of the theory of probabilities will show it to be infinitely probable that such an object should really have some movement of rotation, no matter by what causes the nebula may have originated. As this vast mass cooled it must by the laws of heat have contracted towards the centre, and as it contracted it must, according to the law of dynamics, rotate more rapidly.” He also reckoned that the sun’s heat was caused by gravitational contraction, a topic he explored in his book “The Story of the Sun”. Other scientists disagreed, but Ball, in his public lectures rarely mentioned alternative arguments to the ones he put to his audience. He described the sun’s energy to his audience like this: a globe of coal as big as our earth, if set ablaze at the same moment, would not give out as much heat as the Sun gives out in a thousanth part of a second. With regard to there being other bodies orbiting the sun closer than Mercury; he believed that this was perfectly possible, ...and often quoted J C Watson, who claimed to have seen such a planet during the 1878 eclipse. He included a chapter entitled The Planet of Romance in the first edition of The Story of the Heavens. Even years later when doubts were cast on Watson’s observations, Ball insisted that a scientist of Watson’s repute must have seen something unusual to make such a profound statement. The Martian canals were also a topic discussed in his lectures, often at the request of his audience, who wanted to know if there was life there. He was largely influenced by Lowell following the publication of his book on the red planet, and also his visit to the States to lecture at Lowell’s request. In 1893 the Royal Academy of Sciences were convinced by Ball that communication with Mars was a physical impossibility. He had worked out that to communicate with Mars you would need a flag as big as Ireland, which it would be impossible to wave. In the same year he published a paper in Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine stating that despite there being evidence of the retention of oxygen and water on Mars, the dissimilarities between Mars and Earth make it improbable that intelligent life now exists on our neighbour planet. When Marconi’s devices were first being seen as possible communication systems, he said “ no electrical signalling to Mars appears to me to be possible, for the simple reason that the apparatus would have to be sixteen million times more efficient as that which would suffice to do for wireless telegraphy, for more than even its most ardent champions have yet, as far as I know, ventured to claim for it”. Despite all the advances he had seen during his lifetime, whenever anything new came along he would always believe that this was the ultimate, using his great mathematical skills to foresee the results. |
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