Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-03-05

It Is a wise man who can keep his
feet on the ground and his head out
| Of the clouds of vain imagination. How
much wiser is he who is not content
to stand on the level of the surface
Of this old billiard ball, called earth,
but insists on climbing peaks and eX-
ploring ocean depths to discover facts
unknown before, yet important knowl-
edge!
There never was billiard ball so
highly polished, so devoid of uneven
nesSes, as is the earth. The highest
mountain peak in the world $4,000
feet) and the lowest depth of "old
oceans gray and melancholy waste"
$4,000 feet) make total perpendicu-
lar unevenness of only about II miles.
The diameter Of the earth is about
5000 miles, so an irregularity Of IL
miles In 5000 amounts to less than the
est ball ever polished-12 eight-thou-
sandths. Or II it be reckoned with
the radius from the center to the
circumferen 900 miles-the trough
ness" amounts to about IL four-thou-
sandths, or 8 one-thousandths. which
is still so smooth that the naked eye
cannot detect any irregularities what
ever.
If we could imagine microscopic
creature on a polished billiard ball as
smooth as this mountainous earth,
climbing from the bottom of its deep
est microscopic depression up to the
peak Of its highest projection, 1t would
ball. But If the "hole" were filled with
liquid or gas, preventing the "crea-
ture' from going into its depth, the
"bug" would have to start from the
mean surface to climb up the dizzy
height of one-666th of the balls radius.
Imagine that ball to be inches in dia-
meter, that alpine climber" the mi
croscopic bug" would perform a mighty
climb, equivalent to one-333d Of 3
inches-about equal to the thickness
of this paper, yet that would be equiva-
lent to our climbing from sea level to
the highest peak on this round earth.
No human Alpinist has ever assembled
such dizzy height in the Himalayas.
The writer Is attempting to visualize
what a Dutch scientist has been doing
hour, at the establishment Of the
United States Coast and Geodetic Sur
vey and then borrowing three subma-
rines of the United States Navy and
diving 10 or 100 feet down into the
ocean or Caribbean Sea, in order to
watch the pendulum swing back and
forth down there, so as Ito note how
much rapidly 1t swings at various points
of the sea than it does on land. And
there, under the waves, he cruises
around from point to point and records
the swing at each location.
A pendulum swings according to the
pull of gravity. and gravity Is the at
traction of matter to matter, hence the
the stronger the pull, and, in the re-
verse, the stronger the pull, as shown
by the speed of the swinging pendulum,
the denser must be the matter causing
that pull. Thus the scientist measures
the density of earth and its gravity, at
any given point, and so he weighs the
world.
X * II X
It is a simple thing to weigh sugar,
which Is O. commodity for sale, but as
the Dutchman can't sell the world, what
Is the use of weighing 1t? Now. II 1t
were the man from Doom who was
might scare us into expecting him to
revive his attempt to take over the
world for his own. However, this weigh
masters name isn't Wilhelm, but Vening,
and that old saying, Its all the same
in Dutch" does not hold good. His
full name Is F. A. Vening Meinesz.
Sounds like "Mine-is," but it isn't. He
makes no claim to own the earth; he
is only a scientist making up the goods
in packages.
He began his pendulum swinging in
Holland but at first he found too much
instability in Holland land, caused by
the pounding of the waves of the North
Sea. which created almost continuous
seismic unrest. He conceived the idea
of neutralizing the unreliability Of the
pendulum by making two pendulums
swing in the same plane, but In opposite
directions. From that he has gradually
increased his number Of pendulums
swinging simultaneously to five, and so
daua1nnad an annarafiiS uIaicIa ran he