The Press., 1916-05-10
OUR FLYING WORLD.
Its Awful Velocity In It's Spiral
 Whir Through Space.
THE RESULT IF IT STOPPED.

Were It's Motion Suddenly Arrested the
 Earth Would Be vaporIxsd by the
 Heat Generated and New kebuls
 Would Blaze In the Heavens.
 The direction and speed of the earth's flight are the resultants of two motions with which it is endowed-tbe one around the sun, the other with the sun straight away through space. The com bination of these simultaneous motions causes the earth to travel in 6 spiral path whose axis is directed nearly to. ward the bright star Vega, the most beautiful in the northern sky.
 In its orbit, or annual path around the sun, the earth's mean speed is eighteen and one-half miles per second, while its speed of transition toward Vega, which it shares with the sun, is about twelve miles per second. We may call the resultant or combined speed of the earth in its actual spiral trajectory twenty-two miles per second. This means that if you could stand beside it and see the earth rush by its whole enormous globe, 5000 miles in diameter, would pass your eye fin about six minutes. 1t means that in one day and night twenty-fou hours) the earth travels 1900, 800 milesl
 Compared with the velocity of pro jectiles, the speed of the earth's flight is so great that the swiftest of them would seem to stand still A rife bull let may go, say, one-third of a mile per second fin the first moments of it's flight that is, sixty times slower than the earth, which never stops or slows up.
 The initial velocity of some projec- tiles may be half mile per second, or forty-four times slower than the earth. If cannon could be planted out in space and fired at the earth from dis tance equal to one-quarter of the earth's diameter (which would be like hunter firing his rife about eighteen inches from a deer's side) and if the shot were aimed at the front edge of the fly. ing earth dmagining the latter fiat like a disk) and fired with an undiminishing velocity of half mile per second it would not only miss Its mark, but the whole breadth of the earth would have passed by before the ball had traversed one-tenth of the original distance sepa- rating the cannon from the earth.
 The motion of the earth becomes pos sibly even more impressive when we consider the awful energy that it pro- duces. Kinetic energy, or the capacity to do work, such as striking . blow, is measured by multiplying the mass of the moving body by the square of it's velocity and dividing the product by 2.
 In order to get the result in foot pounds we reckon the mass in pounds and divide again by 32 or by GA in all The reason for dividing by S2 (more exactly 32.1S) is that that number is the unit tin feet per second) of the earth's gravitation, or the acceleration of gravity.
 Calculated in this way. the kinetic energy of the earth comes out at more than ninety septillion ,9o followed by twenty-four zeros) foot poundsl Fig ured in another way, the energy in the flying earth is equivalent to nearly three sextillions of horsepower, the horsepower being the measure of the work done by 33,O00 foot pounds of energy developed in one minute.
 That is to say, if the earth could be brought to rest in one minute and all its energy turned into driving machin- cry it would develop nearly three sex tfllions of horsepower. But if it were i brought to rest in one second 1t would develop sixty times more horsepowerl Then we may consider the thermal effects of the earth's kinetic energy if by instantaneous arrest of the motion it were turned into heat. There would be a sudden development of so tremen. dous a temperature that the earth might be vaporized. Puffi And some astronomer on some distant planet, aiming his telescope through the cool evening air, would catch sight of lit- tie new nebula, twinkling like a thistle down blown into the sky of space.
 Thereafter the dissipated earth would appear in a catalogue on that farofr world under the name of Jones' Neb ula," and nobody, casually glancing at it from an observatory and unsympa. thetically noting its extreme exiguity, would ever think of the heartbreaking history that had been nebulized in that speck of cosmic vapor.-Garrett P. Serviss in New York Journal