Imperial Valley press and the Imperial press., 1906-09-15
BIRTH OF THE MOON
LUNA WAS FLUNG OUT OF THE EARTH
 INTO SPACE.

Conditions On Our Satellite.
 Millions of years ago the earth was not the land bound, sea swept globe so familiar to us. but a liquid mass on which foated crust some thirty-fve miles thick. At that period, says the Strand Magazine. it turned on it's axis Rt a constantly increasing speed that enally shortened the day to three hours. When that terrific velocity was ob- tained 5000 cubic million miles of mat ter were hurled off by the enormous centrifugal force. and our moon was born. The cieaving of so large a body must have left some scar on the earth's surface. 1t has accordingly been sug- gested that the great basin now occu- pied by the Pacific ocean was once filled by what is now the moon.
 Our moon has the distinction of be- ing the largest of all planetary sat ellites-sO large. indeed, that to the inhabitants of Mars it must appear with the earth as a wonderfully beau tiful twin planet
 Because the moon rotates on it's axis tn exactly the same time that it re- wolves around the earth we are des- tined to see little more than one hemi- sphere. So slow is this rotation that the lunar day is equal to fifteen of our days. For half a month the moon is exposed to the fierce heat of the sun; for half a month it spins through space tn the densest' gloom.
 Smaller in mass than the earth is, the moons attraction for bodies must be correspondingly less. A good ter restrial athlete could cover about 12O feet on the moon in a running broad jump. and Ieaping over a barn would be very commonplace feat. A man in the moon could carry six times as much and run six times as fast as he could on the earth.
 Although separated from us by a distance that at times reaches 253,QOO miles and is never less than 222,000 miles, We know more of the physical formation of the single pallid face that the moon ever turns toward us than we know of certain parts of Asia and the heart e Africa. Powerful tele- scopes have brought our satellite with iu a distance of forty miles of the earth. Physicists have mathematicaIly weighed it and fixed its mass at one eighth of the earth, or 73,00O,OOO,O O,O0O,- 000 tous.,
 The moon presents aspects without any terrestrial parallel Rent by fires long since dead, its honeycombed crust seems like great globe of chill cd slag. CraterS are not uncommon on the earth, but in number, size and structure they bear for the most part little resemblance to those of the moon.
 A lunar crater is not the mouth of a volcano having a diameter of a few hundred feet, but a great circular plain twenty, fifty, even hundred miles In diameter, surrounded by a precipice rising to height of 5000 or 10000 feet, with a central hill or two about half as high,
 Water cannot possibly exist as a liquid. for the temperature of the moons surface during the long lunar night is probably not far from 46O degrees below the zero mark of Fahrenheit thermometer, and the at mOspheric pressure is so low that gas under pressure would solidify as it escaped. Ice and snow are the forms. then, which lunar water must assume.
 Because of the present paucity of water the moons atmosphere is so eX- ceedingly rare that startling effects are produced Perhaps the most Strik- ing Is that of the sunrise. Dawn and the soft golden glow that ushers in terrestrial day there cannot be. The sun leaps from the horizon a flaming sickle, and the lOftier peaks imme- diateiy fash into light
 There is no azure sky to relieve the mOnOtonOus effects of inky black shad- ows and dazzling white eXpanses. The sun gieamS in fierce splendor with no clouds to diffuSe its binding light. All day long it is accompanied by the weird zodiacal light that we behold at rare intervals.
 Even in midday the heavens are pitch black, so that despite the sum- light the stars and planets gleam with brightness that they never ex- hibit to us even on the clearest of