Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-08-29
DECIDES MOON MAY.
Be ICY SNOWFALL
Briton Who Was Engineer for
Niagara Falls Power Ex-
plains His Theory.

LONDON August 11.-That the
moon may he a ball of snow and ice.
with a small rocky core. is the daring
and entertaining theory of Prof.
George Forbes, famous astronomer
and scientist.
Prof. Forbes, who incidentally was
chief electrical engineer for the first
Niagara Falls power project. mas
written numerous books on astronomy
and other scientific subjects.
Three things strike the eye in the
first look through a telescope at the
full MOON" he says-"the great sur
faces white as snow, the black belt
! like clean ice. and the streaks like ice
cracks. The whole of the white re-
gions are broken up and disturbed
and covered with lunar craters
The most common feature of these
craters are the fiat floor, level with
the general surface of the moon, the
ring of crags inclosing it, and a hill
or cone rising from the very center
of the floor
Logical Explanation.
The theory that the craters have
been formed by meteOrites fails en-
tirely," he says. for it does not eX-
plain the white streaks that radiate
from TychO lone of the craters) across
the moon, and which must hold the
key of the problem. he thinks. If the
moon were made of ice and snow.
tends Prof. Forbes, who goes on to
say;
Travellers in India who have seen
the full moon rising over the snow
clad HimalayaS have said that the
equality of Wilderness left them in
doubt for a moment whether the moon
were not part of the STOW mountain
range. Moreover experiments in the
highlands of Scotland. With snow
have shown that every type of lunal
| crater can he reproduced by dropping;
/ snoWballs on snow. Surprising the
! moon We're composed of water with q
| small rock core, and subjected to such
! terrific cold as prevails in the lunar
! atmosphere, the whole surface would
| become covered with a shell of ice
! This shell would gradually thicken to
| depth of 100 miles or more. Water
! expands in freezing, and if inside the
! shell new layer of ice is added by
| freezing it expands. This must either
| burst the shell or compress the re-
! naming water. Finally the acCumu
lating water-pressure becomes insup
| pOrta BILE. Then comes the cataclySlh
| The ice cover gives way at it's weak
! est point. This happened to he where
we now have the crater TychO.
Water Spurts and Freezes.
Enormous masses of water are
shot mp thousands Of miles to the
! sky, freezing instantly into objects
! N.ftrli 90! rom tne size vi ram
! d'rn 70 -" size of a mountain. and
then fall back on a surface that is
/ covered with snow from the smaller
| fragments Ul inns elected water. InuS
the lunar craterS may be formed"
The theory fits the facts, according
to latest scientific data. but the
scientist goes on, if the moon is of
snow and ice, may it not melt? And
he answers the query by saying 1t
| may be melting With no apparent
visible result.
In d rare atmosphere, as in the
IIimalayas, snow does not melt into
water, but evaporates in vapor, as
camphor does. Then this must be re-
deposited on the mountains Cf the
moon, as It is on the snow peaks of
the Alps. But. most important, the
disappearance Of any mass could not
be detected by our vision unless the
mass that was melted had a diameter
of many miles"