Omega Camille Flammarion (e novels for free TXT) 📖

the north and west of Paris this double action of the subsidence of the land and the wearing away of the shores had, in less than seven thousand years, made Paris accessible to ships of the greatest tonnage. ↩

Of all terrestrial substances water has the greatest specific heat. It cools more slowly than any other. Its specific heat is four times greater than that of air. When the temperature of a kilogram of water falls one degree, it raises the temperature of four kilograms of air one degree. But water is seven hundred and seventy times heavier than air, so that if we compare two equal volumes of water and air, we find that a cubic meter of water, in losing one degree of temperature, raises the temperature of seven hundred and seventy times four, or 3080 cubic meters of air by the same amount. This is the explanation of the influence of the sea in modifying the climate of continents. The heat of summer is stored in the ocean and is slowly given out in winter. This explains why islands and seashores have no extremes of climate. The heat of summer is tempered by the breezes, and the cold of winter is alleviated by the heat stored in the water. ↩

Many readers will regard this climate quite bearable, inasmuch, as in our own day regions may be cited whose mean temperature is much lower, yet which are nevertheless habitable, as, for example, Verchnoiansk, whose mean annual temperature is −19.3°. But in these regions there is a summer during which the ice melts; and if in January the temperature falls to −60°, and even lower, in July they enjoy a temperature of fifteen and twenty degrees above zero. But at the stage which we have now reached in the history of the world, this mean temperature of the equatorial zone was constant, and it was impossible for ice ever to melt again. ↩

List of Illustrations

Diagram showing the intersection of the comet’s orbit with that of the Earth.

Diagram of the outer solar system showing the paths of various comets and the planets.

The telephonoscope message sent from Mars, showing pictograms of the comet, the Moon, the Earth and the estimated impact point in Italy.

Colophon

Omega
was published in 1894 by
Camille Flammarion.
It was translated from French in 1894 by
J. B. Walker.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Grigg,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2018 by
Richard Tonsing and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
Gordale Scar,
a painting completed in 1812 by
James Ward.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 10, 2018, 8:12 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/camille-flammarion/omega/j-b-walker.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.