Crossword clues for nebular
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Nebular \Neb"u*lar\, a. Of or pertaining to nebul[ae]; of the nature of, or resembling, a nebula.
Nebular hypothesis, an hypothesis to explain the process of formation of the stars and planets, presented in various forms by Kant, Herschel, Laplace, and others. As formed by Laplace, it supposed the matter of the solar system to have existed originally in the form of a vast, diffused, revolving nebula, which, gradually cooling and contracting, threw off, in obedience to mechanical and physical laws, succesive rings of matter, from which subsequently, by the same laws, were produced the several planets, satellites, and other bodies of the system. The phrase may indicate any hypothesis according to which the stars or the bodies of the solar system have been evolved from a widely diffused nebulous form of matter.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1821, "pertaining to an (astronomical) nebula or nebulae," from nebula + -ar.
Wiktionary
a. (context astronomy English) Of or pertaining to a nebula
WordNet
adj. of or relating to or resembling a nebula; "the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system"
resembling a cloud [syn: cloudlike]
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "nebular".
These two have thus together shown--not, to be sure, that Matter at any period actually existed as described, in a state of nebular diffusion--but that, admitting it so to have existed throughout the space and much beyond the space now occupied by our solar system, and to have commenced a movement towards a centre, it must gradually have assumed the various forms and motions which are now seen, in that system, to obtain.
I say, such as this, would to most intellects be conclusive--and I confess that it is so to mine--of the validity of the nebular hypothesis upon which the demonstration depends.
That we may conceive, indeed, a nebular mass as visible at all, we must conceive it as very near us in comparison with the condensed stars brought into view by the modern telescopes.
I should consider the Nebular Cosmogony--not, indeed, as corroborated by the demonstration--but as thereby irretrievably overthrown.
Nichol, without the faintest suspicion of that stupendous truth which is the key to these nebular phenomena.
The Coal Sack was a nebular mass of dust and gas, small as such things go-twenty-four to thirty light years thick-but dense, and close enough to New Caledonia to block off a quarter of the sky.
Now the nebular material showed like layer after layer of gauzy curtains, or like blood spreading in water.
We had seen the first stars condense from the nebular tissue as ruddy giants, though in the remote view inconceivably minute.
Many very young systems, in which nebular matter still predominated over stars, contained as yet no planets.
Soon it became evident even to the most buoyant spirit that this disease was no casual accident but a fate inherent in the nebular nature.
I put aside compassion, and was content merely to follow to its conclusion the collapse of the nebular community.
Considering from the nebular point of view the vast complexity and subtlety of the living worlds, I began to wonder whether the endless divagations of the worlds were really due so much to richness of being as to weakness of spiritual perception, so much to the immensely varied potentiality of their nature as to sheer lack of any intense controlling experience.
Excellent as the nebular mentality was, in its own strange way, the stellar and the planetary mentalities had also their special virtues.
Although I knew that it would probably be useless, I tried to explain the whole thing to her, commencing with the nebular hypothesis, and winding up with the relations that exist between the Moon and the Earth.
It shone with the strange dim green of ionized nebular gases, and the dark spreading wings of it blotted out the stars of Ophiuchus, and slowly grew to hide the Serpent and even the Scorpion.