Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1913-12-30
OUR GLOBES HEAT
In Time, Science Figures, 1t WIN
Melt the Planet.
THE PART RADlUM MAY PLAY.

This Mysterious Element, According ts
Some Theorists, Is Apt TO Be the Po-
tent Factor In Bringing Our World
70 Its Prophesied Fiery End.
No man expects to see the end of the
world arrive in his day any more thar
he expects If he is in good health t.
die tomorrow. Yet there Is wide
spread and perhaps universal belief
that the earth is no more immortal
than man, only its term Of existence is
almost infinitely long compared with
his.
Science gives unquestionable support
70 this view, and every new discovery
seems to make more certain the con
clusion that our world cannot last for
ever.
But there are two opposite theories
as to the manner In which the earth as
the abode of life will come to an end
One assumes that its destruction will
be by heat and the other that it will be
by cold The discovery of the mysteri-
Gus substance radium, which possesses
the property of continually giving of
heat. has impaired renewed impetus to
the first of these theories, which, IL
may be remarked, as a matter Of curl
osity. is in accord with the Bible proph-
eeies.
1.-THE heavens shall roll up as scroll
and the earth shall dissolve with fer.
vent heat"
A most ominous account of the part
that radium may play in the ultimate
destruction of the earth is given in g
book by Professor j. Jolly, entitled
"Radioactivity and Geology"
The argument on which the assump
ton that radium or its mother ele
ment,' uranium, may finally bring the
world to a fiery end is based on the
fact that a particle of radium keeps
itself continually by some inner proc
ess at temperature nearly degrees
above that of its surroundings. In an
hour the radium emits enough heat tC
raise its own weight of water from the
freezing to the boiling point And this
store of heat is so vast that a single
atom of radium will continue to give il
forth at an unyarying rate for about
$500 years.
If there were only a certain quantity
of radium in the earth which could not
be renewed. then we might assume that
at the end of two or three thousand
&c, .f 10.
hausted
But radium itself appears to be con
tinually produced from uranium, which
is an incomparably more abundant sub
stance. SO we conclude that the earth
may have been heated internally by
renewed supplies of radium for untold
millions of years and will continue to
be thus heated for millions of years to
come
Now. following a line of reasoning
which would be too long to enter upon
here, Professor Jolly shows that if at
the present time the nucleus of the
earth contains as much as one five
hundred-thousand-m illionth of a gram
of radium for every gram of ordinary
matter then its temperature must be
rising at such a rate that in about
1O0,0O0.000 years the earth will be en-
tirely melted inside
We do not know whether there is so
much radium as that inside the earth
but from what we observe on its sur
face we conclude that there very well
melting will be accomplished sooner
If there is less it will take longer But
the quantity would have to be very
much less than it probably is in order
that the heat produced could continue
to be radiated away without a disas-
trous rise in the temperature Of the
globe.
The same reasoning carried further
leads b the conclusion that the earth
may have been alternately melted and
cooled off several times in the past
When it is in molten state the free
radiation from the surface produces a
crust, which thickens to a certain
point, and then the inner accumulation
OF heat brings about another melting
from the interior outward.
The phenomenon of new stars is APP
pealed to as lending support to this
view. Again and again astronomers
have seen new star burst forth at
some point in the sky Generally it has
been assumed that they are due to col
hsions in the heavens, but it is perhaps
equally probable that they arise from
the accumulation of heat in some dark
celestial body, causing it to fame out
into incandescence. Other stars are
known to have disappeared, and their
may have been caused
by the cooling off of their surfaces.
Evidently we are only just beginning
to understand the meaning of life and
death in the universe. But we may be
sure that what happens elsewhere hap
pens here and that if the stars are not
eternal the earth is no more so.-Gar-
rett p. Serviss in New York Journal.