The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-10-06
WHEN THE WORLD ENDS
WHIT WILL HAPPEN ON THE
 FINAL DAY OF DAYS.

Views of Two Scientists When the Bottom of the Sea Caves in or the Ocean is Absorbsd the End wiIl
 Come.
 How will the world end? Will it ex- plode, melt, freeze, collide with another planet, or dry up and blow away?
 Ever since the first man trod the earth's surface this problem has been of interest. The prophets of old Israel induIged in speculations concerning it, just as do the prophets of to-day. Two of the latter have been ventilating 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 Rebourdin, a French scientist.
 MT. Maxim's conclusions appear in the Woman's Home Companion, while M. Rabourdin's contribution to the lit- erature of the subject is printed in the Paris Cosmos. Mir. Maxim rejects the suggestion that the earth may be de- ELTOyGu ITOIIl NllIi1L, put tll5 lS lllS main contention of M. Rabourdin.
 Let us suppose" the latter says, "that in consequence of an extraordin- ary movement produced by contrac- ton of the central mass, the bottom of the sea should cave in and thus pre- cipitate the mass of water in the ocean on the burning matter of the interior. The water thus brought in contact with such great heat would decompose, the hydrogen would burn, and burn all the better because of the presence of oXy- gen, the fire gaining step by step, elec- trio phenomena assisting, the greater part of the terrestrial crust would re- turn to it's state at the period of it's for nation and be nothing more than a globe of fire. In this case there would be presented to the worlds which gravi- tate in sidereal space a new star. sud- denly illuminated, the brightness of which would gradually increase, but slowly disappear forever in the pro- found shadows of illimitable space. The earths crust will not, however, be thrown into the air, its divided parts will not be projected into space; they will be coagulated in the mass on which they lay and the gas which is born on this burning mass, compressed under the chaos of the trust, will spread to the exterior under enormous pressure. This Is what is revealed in the spectrum of all of the new stars which have appeared in the last few years.
 At present there is observed a rela- tive frequency in the appearance of new stars, the Novae, as they are call ed by the astronomers. Is the appear ance of these new stars explained by the theory which we have just stated and are the Novae the presages of the fate which awaits us some day in the future? According to prophecies, the earth shall. be destroyed by fire, and perhaps our suffering and corrupted humanity will be called upon to perish in a furnace which is as gigantic as it is aWesome"
 Mir Maxim's suppositions follow oth- CT hneo: "The warping of the earth's crust will continue to produce vol canoes with occasional disaters until the ocean shall disappear by absorp- tion in the earth, and our planet con- tinue to revolve--a dead world, like the moon. By that time, too, our sun may have so much cooled down as to be darkened by the formation of a crust upon it's surface and the whole solar system become tomb of the dead, roll ing on through infinite night. But that time is yet a long way off, and neither ourselves nor our children need to worry.
 Although it is exceedingly improb-