Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-01-02
A DRY TIME.
Inc lay y Coming When the Earth Will
Drink Up All the Sea.

OrihA Up All the Sea.
Most of the planets have probably
cooled down by radiation to a solid I'M
der crust like the earth. The sun. OWING
to his greater mass, is still a fiery Globe
not yet cooled down so as to have a
solid crust. But our moon being a
body of small mass, only about one
e'Shtleth OF the earth's mass, is sup
posed to have had time to cool down to
a solid globe all the way from it's sur
race 10 Its center. Its internal heat is
supposed to have been all radiated
away INTO the surrounding cold pace.
NO" the not interior mass of the earth
can, Oh course, contain no water, and
llttle or none of the free gases that con-
stitute an atmosphere. They would be
boiled Oil, expanded and driven to the
surface where are found now the GREAT
Dnlk or u oceans and our atmosphere.
BUT when the earth shall have parted
with all its internal heat, having thrown
1t INTO the surrounding cold space as
the moon has done, then the cold.
solid but porous mass within its present
crust, Which is now incapable OF alb
sorDlnSs water or air, on account of the
present high temperature. will begin to
drink up the water and air just as the
parched soil after a summers drought
drinks up the rain, and the ground is
dry In a few minutes after the shower.
But you may we'll ask, could the solid
porous mass within the present crust Of
the earth thus drink up the whole of
the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific
()cp3nc opH ao1ca oil 41o ,-o+,,c ~ nv,
globe to disappear? Let us examine
this more closely.
While the interior of the earth re-
mains as hot as it is at present it is no
more possible for the water and air of
u globe to penetrate to these fiery
regions thar it is for a drop of water to
remain OF a hot stone. But the earth
is losing its heat day by day and year
by year, radiating it out into the sur
rounding cold space. I know it has
been computed that the earth receives
from the sun annually just as much
heat as it loses in a year by radiation
into the surrounding space. Grant
that it be so for the present and for
many thousands of years to come. But
the trouble is that the sun himself is
cooling OFF. and, therefore, will o be
always able to send lis as much heat us
he does at present. The time will,
therefore, surely come when we shall
lose more heat by radiation into space
than the sun will be able to return to
us. Then it will be only a question OF
time for the earth gradually to cool
down, as the moon has already done,
from surface to the center. When that
time comes will not the dry but solid
and porous core of III globe drink III
the occans and atmosphere. CAUSING
them to disappear, not into large cav
ernous pockets, but into the minute
pores of its substance?
The proposition appears to be estab'
lished by strict calculation that the in
terror of the earth when cold will be
able to absorb more than four times
possibly more than thirty times, TIL,
amount of water new on its surface
Now, it seems certain that in the man
ner first explained the earth will ron
tinue to lose both its superficial water
and its atmosphere. The earth, TIL.
other planets, and even the sun him
self, are regarded AS doomed at some
future day to the same fate. Melan
choly fate. some will say. But VIII!
complain of the general law OF naturc'
Everything in nature has its morning
of life, its high meridian Of @lo"y anC
strength, its evening decline and it
midnight of b~lackness and death. 1
The ease of Il world-is that The las
carm OF a scrics?-Prot.. CoOhicY.