Evening star., 1924-08-01

lous form, its rate OF rotation must
| have steadily increased. This increase
full solar tides then in existence. but
in spite Of them the period finally
shortened to about three hours.
The force Of gravity at the eaua..
tor thus became less and less. and
the solar tides became higher and
higher, until one day catastrophe
occurred, catastrophe of such mag
n1tude as has never been seen upon
earth, before or since-fve thousand
million cubic miles of material left
the earth's surface never to return
to It.
whether it all left at once or the
action was prolonged we do not know,
but we may try in vain to imagine
phenomena exhibited when a planet
was cleft in twain and a new planet
was born into the solar system"
At first the detached mass remained
near the earth-held by the weakened
but still adequate gravity-and
whirled around with it, almost touch
ing 1t, but gradually the revolutions
OF the earth increased and outran the
revolving moon. increasing the GEN.
trifugal force driving the moon into
gravitational power of the moon dis
torted the rotund earth by creating
tides twice daily, which acted as
brakes upon the earth's revolutions.
| oceans, with which everybody il
familiar, but also tides of the solid
| EARTH" amounting to a lifting in
height to one foot, twice daily, of all
the continents with their huge noun
| tains and broad plains. This brak-
ing tendency Of the tides is lengthen-
ing our day. so that now it is a frac-
tion of a second longer than 1t was at
the beginning of the Christian era,
and it i, st growing Song onger dsv The The
earth will stop turning; some day the
moon will break away into a greater
orbit, apart from it's mother, earth,
about which, through the millions
great catastrophe, 1t has swung like
| child's ball upon a string, always
presenting the same half toward the
earth. Nobody has ever seen what is
| on the other side
X X
1t is generally accepted that the
moon has no atmosphere, no vegeta-
ton, nor life. Yet astronomers are
Upon the side turned toward earth
there are 10000 "craters." clearly
visible through telescopes.
Have these craters come from
volcanic action? There can be no
volcanic eruption without water, say
feophysicists. They testify that no
cloud has ever been seen. In the alb
sence of moisture, therefore, the era
ters could not be volcanic. A COM
mittee, consisting of d geophysicist,
a volcanist and and an astronomer, is
soon to leave the East for Arizona
for the special purpose of making a
joint study of this question of moon
moisture and the nature of it's craters.
X X X
II the craters are not volcanic, then
they must be shell holes" from the
celestial bombardment of meteors
Meteors hit the earth, too. In Ari-
zona there is the famous Meteor Cra-
ter, nearly mile in diameter and
1000 feet deep-a gigantic shell
hole" like those familiar to soldiers
of the World War, but hundreds of
diameters greater Fragments of
meteor metal are scattered all around
1T. Usually meteorS striking the
earths atmospheric envelope are
heated and melted by the friction of
the air, long before they reach the
ground, and fall in fragments com
paratively harmless.
Not so with the moons meteors.
There being no atmosphere, the
meteors remain intact and cold until
they plunge with full force upon the
moons surface, making "craters, -
some of which are 55 miles in diam
eter. In the ABSENCE of atmosphere
there is neither wind nor rain to
cause erosion. as upon the earth and
the craters upon the moon remain
imperishable, eternal scars
While the never-seen side of the
lunar globe is probably like that ever
turned toward earth, still the mys-
terry of the unseen tantalizes and
stimulates curiosity. Not even the
hundreds of observations of our Navy
will see the other side, demonstrating ..
the Nays famous motto: 1T can't
be done. but here 1t Is"
tCoryright. 1924, by Paul V Collin.l