Evening star., 1925-09-13


n star. wandering through infinity,
beheld the sun, million miles in
diameter, in a blazing confiagration,
with flames leaping out half million
miles high. Never had there been so
thrilling a holocaust.
The intrigued star, watching the
fire, desired a souvenir and 1t gradu-
ally drew closer and closer until 1t
could deftly purloin it in the midst of
the excited confusion of the con-
Migration.
What it stole was a blob of gas.
Some astronomers and geophysicists
say that that stellar souvenir was in
the form OF a shining ring, seized by
the gravitation of the starry looter
from the hand of Old Sol. 1t was
like the rings which even tonight.
through a telescope, may be seen
around Saturn. When the thief was
in the very act of carrying off the
loot Sol awoke from his astoundment
and fought for the prize.
1t was a mighty fight. The poet
Milton has undertaken to describe a
hattie in heaven, when the celestial
warriors used mountains for their
missiles, hurting them with fury
n against the internal host. But when
the sun fought the robber star for
recovery of his gas ring, he reached
out with his arms of gravitation over
sna.tched from his foe a ring SO great
that Is circumference encircled not
mere mountains but many worlds.
In the conflict the ring was tossed
and twisted and finally shattered into
many ragments-bubbles of gas-and
these segments fioated through space,
swirling, whirling around and around
the head of their champion, whose
long arms would not let them fall.
At last the sun gathered the pieces
TO himself and the robber star fed in
defeat, never to return, and no
celestial police has even gotten proof
of it's number or any clue to it's
identity. That was the first case Of
a chauffeur's hitting and running"
beyond capture or identification.
Then the sun, in his workshop, set
about to mend the shattered pieces
of the ring-even tried to vulcanize
the fragments, but he could not sue
ceed in remaking a ring for the bits
were too badly broken to reform into
the original shape. Possibly some
fragments may have been carried
away by robbers and become planets
or satellites in other universes. Who
knows?
The great blobs of gas, pieces of the
ring which the sun held in his grasp,
kept whirling on their own axes and
around their solar orbits until some
pieces united. Eight of the reunited
masses are still travelling their solar
orbits and they have been tagged as
the eight planets.
Mercury, the baby, stays closest
home: he is only $4,000, 900 miles from
Father Sol. Venus is $4,000. 900 miles
away from the parental freside
Next comes Earth, $4,000. 900 miles
of-and this story has 50 much to-
tell about Earth that there is no room
for details about the other planets.
Mars, with whom some scientists
expect to establish photographic COM
munication some day, is from 35,-
10000 to $50, 5000 miles from the
Earth, according to their respective
positions in their orbits, and the
radio fans have not yet decided the
length of wave which will best span
that distance for Martian and Mum
dane fsteners-in.
Beyond Mars swing the far-flung
planets, Jupiter in an orbit of 4S3,-
100000 miles radius; Saturn nearly
twice as far-her rings are safe.
Uranus is In an orbit of 1,7S1 900 900
miles and Neptune with an orbital
radius of 2,971 ,6O0, 900 miles.
The racetrack of Neptune, around
which he has to run to make a Nep-
tun1an year, is so great a circle that
he has rot had a single anniversary
Independence from King George III
Ills year is equal to 164.78 of ours
A Neptunian is aged at six months,
or rather human octogenarian
would be rated a pulling infant" of
26 or IS weeks in the arms of
Neptunfan nurse.
a ND SO the future earth, as a gas
eous ball, millions of miles in
diameter, went spinning daily on it's
own axis, swinging once each year,
like ball held by a string (solar grav-
1tation), around the sun, and marching
on with the sun and all the solar uni
verse in a grand forward invasion of
the infinity of a Universe of Uni
verses.
Then the Lord answered Job out Of
the whirlpool and said, Where vast
thou when I laid the foundations of
the earth? Declare If thou hast un-
derstanding!
WHO hath laid the measures
thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath
stretched the line upon it? Where
upon are the foundations thereof fas-
tened? Or who laid the corner stone
thereof? When l made the
cloud the garment thereof and
-hicE darkness a swaddling band
about it, and brake up for 1t my de-
creed place and set bars and doors,
and said, Hitherto shalt thou come
but no further; and here shall thy
proud waves be stayed"'"
How can one visualize the tremen-
dous activity of that ball of gas des-
tined to be kneaded and condensed
and packed until it became the solid
earth? 1t was blazing hot. for 1t had
been a part of the burning sun. No
thermometer could have measured its
heat.
There are geophysicists, like the
learned staff of the Carnegie Geo
physical Laboratory, in Chevy Chase,
who spend their lives in fathoming the
mysteries of that great ball Of gas and
what 1t developed. DIR. l.. H. Adams
and DR.. E. D. Williamson of that staff
have told some of the wonders of the
1000, 100000 years since the gas began
to cool, and became first liquid, then
solid.
1t was a comparatively short period
only about Is, 900 or 10000 years
before the gas had cooled enough to
condense into a solid globe. During
all those years the surface was radiat-
ing heat out into unfathomed space,
as the sun continues to do. and with
the loss of heat the gas became liquid,
not mere water, but liquid metal, such
q may be seen pouring out of a great
retort of an iron foundry.
The radiation cooled the surface
much faster than the interior, so that
upon the surface would form masses
of greater weight than the gas, or the
liquid, and these masses would sink
toward the center, in vast movements
of matter, displacing the gas below,
which would be forced to rise toward
the outer surface. Thus was set up a
continual movement of solids down.
ward and of gas or liquid upward, and
the movement Is called by the scfen-