The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-09-21
WHEN THE WORLD ENDS
WHAT WILL HAPPEN ON THE
 FINAL DAY OF DAYS.
Views of Two Scieptists-When the Bottom of the Sea Caves in Or Ocean is Absorbed the
 End Will Come.

Detroit Free Press.
 How will the world end? Will 1t ex
 plode, melt, freeze, collide with another planet, or dry up and blow away? Ever since the first man trod the earth's green surface this problem has been of interest. The prophets of old Israel indulged in speculations concern ing it, just as do the prophets of today Two of the latter have been ventilatins their views recently. One is Hudson Maxim, the brother of Hiram Maxim. and an inventor of note on his own account and the other is M. Louis Rabourdin, . | French scientist.
 Mir. Maxm's conclusions appear in The Womans Home Companion, while M. Rabourdn's contribution to the literature of the subject is printed in the Paris Cosmos. MT. Maxim rejects the sugges- tion that the earth may be destroyed from within, but this is the main con tention of M. Rabourdin.
 When the Sea Sinks.
 Let us suppose" the latter says. "that in consequence of an extraordinary move ment produced by a contraction of the central mass, the bottom of the sed should cave in and thus precpitate the mass of water in the ocean on the burn ing matter of the interior. The water mus brought III COHtdCI "ith SuCh 1
 great heat would decompose. the hydro gen would purn, and burn all the bet ter because of the presence of oxygen,
 the fire goining step by step. electric phnnomena assisting. the greater part of the terrestial crust would return to 1 it's state at the period of it's formation | and be nothing more than globe of fire l In this case there would be presented +o | the worlds which gravitate iri sidereal | space a new star suddenly illuminated, | the brightness of which would gradually | increase but slowly disappear forever in the profound shadows of illmitable space. The earth's crust will not, how ever, be thrown into the air, its divided
 parts will not be projected into spac ,; they will be coagullted in the mass on
 which they lay and the gas which is born
 on this burning mass, compressed under the chaos of the crust, will spread to the exterior under enrmous pressure.
 This is what IS revealed in the spectrum of all Of the new stars which have ap- pelred in the last few years.
 At present there Is observed a rel l. tive frequency in the appearance of new stars, the Navae, as they are called by | the astronomers. Is the appearance of | these new stars explained by the theo~y which We have just stated and are the 1 Navae the presages of the fate which | awaits us some day in the future? Ac- 1 cording to prophecies, the earth shall be destroyed by fire. and perhaps our | suffering and corrupted humanity will he | called upon to perish In a furnace which | is gigantic and awcsome."
 Mir Maxims suppositions follow othe: | lines: "The warping of the earth's crust will continue to produce volcanoes witt | occasional disasters until the ocefn shal disappear by absorption in the earth. and | our planet continue to revolve-a dead
 world, like the moon. By that time, too our sun may have so cooled down as tt be darkened by the formation of a crust on its surface, and the whole solar sys tenn become q tomb of the dead rolling on through infinite night. But that time Is yet long way off, and neither our. | selves, nor our children need to worry. "Although it is exceedingly improbabl | that the earth may be destroyed by col | lision with a comet some huge me | teor, still the fact that such conting- cncy is possible is sufficient ground foI | imagining what the result might be. Al though 1t is not probable, still it is pos sblc. that the earth may sometime en- counter such a shower of small metenr5 perhaps in the form of comet. that
 the heat of combustion from friction