Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1910-12-23

II
unquestioningly accepted !. the
- statement that the moon was
nothing more than a burned-Qut
world, a dead planet, without atpoos-
phere, water or soil, alternately
frozen In cold more intense than
any known to the earth, and sizzling
in a heat greater many times than
the burning atmosphere of Port Said,
the worlds most torrid spot. The
pale disk had ceased to hold anything
of interest for the men who sit at
great eye-pieces of the great glasses
that sweep the heavens nightly. The
dead craters of the lunar volcanoes
had all been mapped and located time
after time. They were universally be.
lieved to be extinct The moon was
looked upon as an exhausted field for
the astronomer.
The great astronomical societies
are not SO sure about the moon now
as they were few months ago. Away
down on the lower limb of the big
silver disk something is happening
Just what 1t is the astronomers do
not know. There is a brilliant spot
almost visible to the naked eye, an
ominous glowing ulcer, that seems to
be growing brighter. Years ago the
great Herschel stoutly maintained
that there was still volcanic activity
on the moons surface. Two great
craters old Proculus and the great
Aristarchus, great holes in the bat
tered surface of the moon, were point
ed out by Herschel as examples of
the wrath of internal, pent-up forces
that might some day make the pale
satellite an awful object In the
heavens
The moon was the subject of the
first astronomical observations ever
made by mankind. Even the red In
dian counted his time by the waxing
and waning Of the shining disk. The
moon of little leaves, of green corn,
OF falling leaves and the moon OF
SHOWS were his names for the chang
ing phases of the earth's satellite
The Babylonians, Chaldeans and Egyp.
uans constructed their first rude cal
endar from the swinging of the moon
In its sweeping, spiral path about the
earth.
Modern telescopes have shown the
seas and CULTS to be great depressions
filled With dreary craters, reminiscent
of a terrible volcanic activity. In case
the indicated disturbances should de.
velop into a general cataclysm the
l.
wonderful spectacle. Photographs of
the moon, made through the great
Lick and others of the worlds big.
gest glasses. show a terribly SCARED
and battered surface. There is some.
thing inexpressibly dreary and DESC
late in a photograph of many of the
regions of the moon. Great craters of
unknown depth lie in the midst of
mountain peaks that would stand
shoulder high. above the greatest
peaks of the Andes or the Himalayas
The soc" He'd seas" were undoubted.
ly the beds of primeval oceans in the
long ago, but they are bare as the
Sahara at present, and have possibly
been SO for millions of years. Thav
are not at all at the same level, but
the beds of many of them seem 10
have been twisted and warped by
some titanic force. There are far more
craters than there are mountains over
all its surface. They seem to be
for the most part, ruins of terrible
fiery mountains. but some of them
were undoubtedly the rim walls of
molten lakes that have dubbed and
seethed and steamed when the moon
and its parent earth were young.
The true craters are remarkably
similar to those of the Mediterranean
volcanoes, having the same abrupt
depths and sloping sides gradually
rising from a level plain OF cooled
lava. Forty of the lunar peaks are
lAigher than Mont Blanc. the hishest