The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-11-27

length and Of such great depth that
they are popuitrIy regarded as bottom
less
The suggestion has been made that
the mass OF the moon. when torn
away from the earth left the great
scar now nIled Dy the Pacific Ocean.
and the shape o. that ocean. supple
ireutcI By the peculiarities o. the Ha-
wailau volcanoes. certainly goes far to
support that view.
The coast-Iine Of the Pacific is near
" that OF a great circle whose center
lies on The Tropic of Capricorn. in
Ioueit4de one hundred and seventy
west. about five hundred miles south
OF Samoa. 1t is bounded everywhere,
from cape Horn TO the East Indies,
by "a continuous row of active or eX-
tiuct volcanoes. Toward the center of
this circle the volcanic peaks of Ha-
wall. Samoa and New Zealand are
situated with reference to the circum-
ference much as the central peaks of a
lunar volcano are situated with refer
enee to the rim. In other words, the
general shape of the bed Of the Pa
cific ocean is that Of the crater of a
great volcano, much ike kuauea, much
like thu great craters OF the moon.
has an entirely different shape, and
this difference has never been explain
ed Generally speaking, its eastern
coast-line and its western coast-line fit
. into each other so naturally and 50
svInmetricalIy that they seem to be
parts of q torn fabric. This is so great
ly true that it is not unreasonable to
suppose that they We're torn apart;
that when some great cataClysm Oc-
CURED where the bed of the Pacific
now is the newly formed crust of the
earth was so torn apart and shift
ed that the rent formed the bed of the
Atlantic as the departing mass form
ed the circular bed of the Pacific.
When the earth had sufficiently cool
ed for water to condense these two de-
pressions appear to have filled and to
have thus formed our two great
oceans If the reader will take an or
binary terrestrial globe and draw a
line from the southern point of Nova
, Scotia TO the coast of Dutch Guiana,
and then suppose all the region west
of this line to be land as appears to
have once been the case, the way i'll
which the two sides of the Atlantic fit
together will strikingly appear.
| In further support of the theory is
+
surface was solid when the moon was
created. and the certainty, this be
ing so, that the catastrophe would have
left a permanent scar. Biologists are
not unanimous regarding these ques-
lions. but the geological time.
From the standpoint of quantity it
would have required shell of matter
covering all the ocean surface to a
depth of thirty-fiVe miles to form a
spherical body the size of the moon.
This depth We may therefore take on
this supposition as the thickness of
the crust of the earth at that time.
Since the average depth of the ocean
4 is about three miles, this crust was
floating on the earth's liquid interior,
immersed to a depth of thirty-two
miles. The density of this crust as
we find it in the moon Ghree and one
half gives US a not improbab bic value,
bearing out the supposition.
When first thrown off the moon can
not have had its present shape, as the
attractiv force of the earth would not
have permitted a spherical body Of
such size to exist in its immediate
vicinity. 1t possibly took the form of
a ring more or less irregular. sur
rounding the earth's equator and was
proba bly, composed of a large number
of separate bodies which, as they re-
coded. cOaIeSced and eventually took
, the present spherical shape.
Having now looked back into the past
as far as modern science can see, let
US turn in the opposite direction and
learn what the future has in store for
US. Are we going to lose our moon aft
er all? Apparently not, for the recess
sion is limited. The moon may con-
tinue to recede until it reaches dis
lance of three hundred and fifty thou
sand miles. or about half as far again
as it is now It's month will then last
fifty of our present days. Our day at
that remote epoch will also have in
creased and be fifty times as long as
it is at present. The earth and moon
will then constantly present the same
face to one another. The moon will
cease to rise and set. there will be one |
point on the earth's surface where the |
moon will be always overhead, and peo- |
pie living on the other side of the earth |
will never see the moon at all. After /
that the tides will cease to act, per- /
manent condition will have been reach I
ed and no further change Will be pos
sible.
That this condition of affairs can not :
occur in many millions of years is
obvious. but is il not possible that in
the meantime other events may occur (
which viii modify or entirely change
the order of procedure? To this ques-
ton science gives a pretty distinct af-
firmative. The moon will cease to re-
cede as soon as the tides cease to
exist. and the tides will cease to exist
as soon as the ocean dries up, or
freezes into one solid mass. Whether
in the future the ocean will dry up, we
can not say, although it looks as if
it would. unless it first freezes solid.
The heat of our sun is maintained by
a steady contraction of it's bulk,
amounting TO an annual diminution of
about two hundred and fifty feet in it's
diameter. The suns diameter is about
a million miles, and although this dimi-
mutton is small it is clear that il can