"Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - After Worlds Collide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wylie Philip)

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After Worlds Collide
By

Philip Wylie

And

Edwin Balmer

FOREWORD
Early in the middle third of the twentieth century a brilliant astronomer named
Sven Bronson observed through a telescope in South Africa that two bodies
were moving through space toward the solar system.
Bronson's calculations revealed to him that these wandering spheres would
pass very close to the earth, make a circuit of our sun, and turn back toward
space and infinity. The larger of the two wandering worlds would strike and
annihilate the earth. Finer and more delicate calculations tended to show that
the smaller body, which was of the same magnitude as the earth, would be
"caught" by the sun and held in an orbit between the courses of Mars and
Venus.
In other words, Bronson's discovery was an announcement of the end of the
world.
It would be an end of the world preceded by the close passage of two mighty
planets from some sun lost in the voidтАФ two planets which had been pulled
from their pathways ages ago by a passing star. The world would be replaced by
a new earth whose pathway would take it alternately out to the cold orbit of
Mars and back again to the vicinity of Venus.
The bodies were named for their discoverer: the larger one, Bronson Alpha, and
the smaller, Bronson Beta.
Sven Bronson knew the horrors that would attend the announcement of his
awful findings.
He and Lord Rhondin, the Governor of the South African Dominion, summoned
David Ransdell, a war veteran and flier, to carry the tangible demonstration to

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an American scientist, Cole Hendron. Ransdell started out with photographic
plates which proved the discovery.
Cole Hendron, the greatest astrophysicist and engineer of the century, had
already been notified of the approaching doom. He and his daughter Eve, who
acted as his assistant, checked Bronson's calculations.
There was no doubt. The earth was doomed.
Hendron, Bronson and others united the foremost scientists of the world in a