The Cause of the Genesis of the Moon

“And the Arch-Engineer Archangel Algamatant was good enough to explain to us personally that in all probability what had happened was as follows:

“ ‘The broken-off fragments of the planet Earth had lost the momentum they received from the shock before they had reached the limit of that part of space which is the sphere of this planet, and hence, according to the “Law of Falling,” these fragments had begun to fall back towards their fundamental piece.

“ ‘But they could no longer fall upon their fundamental piece, because in the meantime they had come under the cosmic law called “Law-of-Catching-Up” and were entirely subject to its influence, and they would therefore now make regular elliptic orbits around their fundamental piece, just as the fundamental piece, namely, the planet Earth, made and makes its orbit around its sun “Ors.”

“ ‘And so it will always continue, unless some new unforeseen catastrophe on a large scale changes it in one way or another.

“ ‘Glory to Chance . . .’ concluded His Pantemeasurability, ‘the harmonious general-system movement was not destroyed by all this, and the peaceful existence of that system “Ors” was soon re-established.’

“But nevertheless, my boy, this Most High Commission, having then calculated all the facts at hand, and also all that might happen in the future, came to the conclusion that although the fragments of the planet Earth might maintain themselves for the time being in their existing positions, yet in view of certain so-called ‘Tastartoonarian-displacements’ conjectured by the Commission, they might in the future leave their position and bring about a large number of irreparable calamities both for this system ‘Ors’ and for other neighboring solar systems.

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