When showing how a supply of fifty millions of years of sun-heat could be produced from the collision of two half-suns colliding with velocities of 476 miles per second, Dr. Croll says in his "Discussions on Climate and Cosmology," of 1885, at page 301: "The whole mass would be converted into an incandescent gas" (the handmaid of the period), "with a temperature of which we can have no adequate conception. If we assume the specific heat of the gaseous mass to be equal to that of air (viz. 0·2374), the mass would have a temperature of about 300,000,000° C., or more than 140,000 times that of the voltaic arc."
Now, let us suppose the whole mass of the whole solar system to be converted into a gas, or vapour, at the pressure of our atmosphere, and temperature of 0° C., its volume would be equal to that of a sphere of not quite 9,000,000 miles in diameter. Suppose, then, this volume to be heated to 300,000,000° C. in a close vessel, as would necessarily have to be the case, the pressure corresponding to that temperature would be 1,094,480 atmospheres, according to the theory on which the absolute zero of temperature is founded. Without stopping to consider whether air or any gas could be heated to the temperature mentioned; or the strength of the vessel 9,000,000 miles in diameter required to retain it at the equivalent pressure; if we increase the diameter of the containing sphere to a little more than that of the orbit of Neptune, or, say 6,000,000,000 miles, and allow the air or gas or vapour to expand into it; then, as the volume of the new sphere will be greater than the former one in the proportion of 9,000,000 cubed to 6,000,000,000 cubed, or as 1 is to 296,296,296, the pressure of the gas will be reduced to 296,296,296 divided by 1,094,980, that is just over the 270th part of an atmosphere; which, in its turn would correspond to a temperature of a very little more than -273°, or what is considered to be[A] 273° C. above absolute zero of temperature; or, at all events, to the temperature of space, whatever that may be.
[A] This temperature is altogether erroneous, as we shall show in due time; at present our proof would not be accepted without a demonstration, for which we have not sufficient data.