Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1885-01-07
A DRY PERIOD IS COMING.
When Old Mother Earth
Drinks up Her Oceans.

w lloll Via MOLIeF EdTIl
Drinks up Her Oceans.
Tho Suro Fate that Is in Store for Our
Remote Successors,
Prof. Cookley, of New York, says,
Most of the planets have probably
cooled down by radiation to a solid
under crust Ike the earth. The sun
owing to his greater mass is still fiery
mass not yet cooled down so as to have
solid crust. But our moon being
body Of small mass only about one
eigthieth Of the earths mass, is sups
posed to have had time to cool down to
a solid globe all the way from its sur
face to its center. Its internal heat is
supposed to have been radiated away
into the surrounding cold space Now
the hot interior mass of the earth can,
of course, contain no water, and little
or none of the free gases that consti-
tute an atmosphere. But when the
earth shall have parted with all its in
ternal heat, having thrown it 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 absorbing 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 well 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 Oceans and cause all the waters
of our globe TO disappear? Let us ex-
anime this more closely.
While the interior of the earth re-
mains as hot as 1t is at present it is no
more possible for the water and air of
our globe to penetrate to these fiery re-
gions than it is for drop of water to
remain on a hot stone. But the earth
Is losing its heat day by day and year
by year, radlating it out into the sur
rounding cold space. know 1t has
been computed that the earth receives
from the sun annually just as much
heat as it loses in 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 the sun himself is cool
Ing off, and, therefore, will not be
always able to send us rs much heat as
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 question of
time for the earth gradually to cool
down, as the moon has already done,
from surface to center. When that
time comes will not the dry but solid
and porous core of our globe drink up
our oceans and atmosphere, causing
them to disappear, not into large cav
crnous pockets, but into the minute
pores of its substance?
The proposition appears to be estab-
ished 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, the
amount of water now on it's surface.
Now, it seems certain that in the man.
ner first explained the earth will con-
tinue to lose both its superficial water
and its atmosphere. The earth, the
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 why
complain of the general law of nature?
Everything in nature has its morning
of lfe its high meridian of glory and
strength, its evening decline and its
midnight of blarkness and death.