Evening Star Newspaper, September 13, 1925, Page 87

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES Part 5—8 Pages Evolution of E BY PAUL HE most V. COLI S. melodramatic theme for a “movie” that has ever baffled the {magination is “The Robbery of the Sun.” That scenario has never been pictured and the story cannot be told adequately, for it is too stupen- dous for any stage setting or for any press There is the opening tragedy when a star, wandering through infinity, beheld the sun, a million miles in allameter, in a blazing conflagration, with flames leaping out half a million miles high. Never had there been so thrilling a holocoust The intrigued star, watching the fire, desired a souvenir and it sradu- ally drew closer and closer until it could deftly purloin it in the midst of the excited confusion of the con- flagration. What it stole was a blob of gas Some astronomers and geophysicist say that that stellar souvenir was in the form of a shining rifig, seized by \ the gravitation of the starry looter from the hand of Old Sol. It was like the rings which even tonight, | hrough a telescope, may be seen around Saturn. When the thief was in the very act of carrying off the Sol awoke from hi: and fought for the prize. 1t was a mighty fight. The poet filton has undertaken to describe a attle in heaven, when the celestial astoundment arriors used mountains for thelr missiles, hurling them with fury /ugainst the infernal host. But when | the sun fought the robber star for recovery of his gas ring, he reached out with his arms of gravitation over o battlefield of millions of miles and «natched from his foe a ring so great Athat is circumference encircled not mere mountains but many worlds. In the conflict the ring was tossed and twisted and finally shattered into many fragments—bubbles of gas—and these segments floated through space, =swirling, whirling around and around | the head of their champion, whose] Jong arms would not let them fall. At Jast the sun gathered the pieces 1o himself and the robber star fled in defeat, mnever to return, and no celestial police has even gotten proof of its number or any clue to its 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 satelites in other universes. Who knows? The great blobs of gas, pleces of the ring which the sun held in his grasp, kept whirling on their own axes and around their solar orbits until some of them bumped together and many pleces united. Eight of the reunited masses are still traveling their solar orbits and they have been tagged as the eight planets. Mercury, the baby, home: he {s only 36,00 Father Sol. Venus is 62,200,000 miles away from the parental fireside Next comes Earth, 92,300,000 miles off—and this story has so much ta tell about Earth that there is Hio room for details about the other planets. Mars, with whom some scientists expect to establish radiographic com- munication some day, is from 35, 000,000 to 150,000,000 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 Mun- dane listeners-in. Beyond Mars swing the far-flung planets, Jupiter in an orbit of 483, 300,000 miles radius; Saturn nearly twice as far—her rings are safe. Uranus is in an orbit of 1,781,900,000 miles and Neptune with an orbital radius of 600,000 miles. The racetrack of Neptune, around which he has to run to make a Nep- tunfan year, is so great a circle that he has rot had a single anniversary since we signed our Declaration of Independence from King George IIL His year is equal to 164.78 of ours. A Neptunian is aged at six months, or rather a human octogenarian would be rated a “puiling infant” of 26 or 28 weeks in the arms of s Neptunian nurse. * k% x AND so eous stays closest ,000 miles from the future earth, as a gas- ball, millions of miles in diameter, went spinning daily on its own axis, swinging once each year, like a ball held by a string (solar grav- ftation), 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 sald, ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast un- derstanding! “*Who hath lald the thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Where- e the foundations thereof fas- Or who laid the corner stone thereof? * * * When I made the cloud the garment thereof and *hict Jiikness a swaddling band about it, and brake up for it my de- ereed 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? It was blazing hot, for it had been a part of the burning sun. No thermometer could have measured its hea There are geophysici Jearned staff of the Carnegie Geo- physical Laboratory, in Chevy Chase who spend their ltves in fathoming the mysteries of that great ball of gas and what it developed. Dr. L. H. Adams and Dr. E. D. Williamson of that staff have told some of the wonders of the 2,000,000,000 years since the gas began 16 cool, and became first iiquid, then olld. It was a comparatively short period ~—only about 15,000 or 20,000 years— before the gas had cooled enough to condense into a solid globe. During all those years the surface was radlat- 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 liguid metal, such as may be seen pouring out of a great Yetort 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 Jiquid, 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 ahe movement Is called by the scien- tists “‘convectio! How heavy w course of thousands of vears accumu- Jated in the center of the vast volume s, like the s the mass which in | measures | |in the ocean are small—less than 10/ WASHINGT | | | | | cific weight of 2, or if an equal volume weighs three times that of water its specific value is 3. This Is one of the simplest but most fmportant facts to keep m mind in considenng what finally accumulated in the core of that ball of gas and became the center of our earth In our childhood days we were told | that hell was inside of our “hollow” | earth, and, in infantile t -or, we feared to dig a few inches down, lest | the devil might come out. An Amer- ican ‘“philosopher” named Symmes. created some interest half a_centur: | ago by imagining that,the ‘“hollow earth could be entered through a great | mythical hole located near the North Pole, perhaps in that region which has never yet been explored and | which the MacMillan expedition this Summer has sought to penetrate. Symmes declared that there were mil- lions of people inside the earth, who knew no sky but the arching shell of the “hollow” mundane sphere. But| “Symmes’ Hole,” as it was known threescore years ago, has been for- gotten, and Jules Verne's “Trip to the Center of the World” has lost in- terest since four American aviators made a trip around the earth above the clouds, far more exciting and ro- mantic—and true. * K ok ok CIENCE now ' takes the place of superstition and fancy. It tell us that, far from being hollow, the center of the earth is composed of a solid niekel-iron ball, some 4,000 miles in diameter, in which are imbedded nuggets pr strata of still denser, harder ubstances, including huge dlamonds | “*of purest ray serene.” The sclentists tell us that the whole earth weighs five and one-haif times as much as it would weigh if it were nothing but water. In very recent years sclence has discovered that under every square mile, all over the surface of the world, the column extending down to the | very center exactly balances every | other column of equal superficial di- | mension; or if it be made heavier, it | will sink toward the center of the earth, pushing upward an . equal | weight outside itself, until the whole rests in equilibrium. For example: If a great river de- posits in its delta the washings from the upland—from mountains—the welght of the mountains is lessened and the weight of the delta is in- creased; but gravitation or “isostas equalizes that break in the equill- brium by drawing down the heavier delta and elevating the “eternal hills” until they regain their equal balance. So the process of rounding the earth is continuous even today, and no part of the work of creation is ever com- pleted. The differences in elevation of the highest peak and the deepest valley miles. This ball, with all its mountain | r purposes of comparison | use water as the | unit, and anything which is twice as heavy, as watex i§ said 19 have & spe- nges, is smooth as a polished bil- | liard ball, for isostasy is ever smooth- ing its roughne: The science which sells us of the equilibrium of all sec-] tions of the earth, called isostasy, was not recognized even by foremost scientists a decade ago, yet nobody now questions its accuracy. Science has actually weighed : the world. Dr. D. R. Heyl, at the United States Bureau of Standards, within a stone’s throw of the Geophysical Lab- oratory, is weighing the globe with greater accuracy than a jeweler welghs a diamond. It has been said that if we could conceive of a hole straight through the earth, passing through the cen- ter, and we should drop a weight—say a ton—down that hole, it would lose its weight steadily as it fell, untfl when it reached the exact center the force of gravity pulling toward China would counterbalance the gravity pulling back to America, so that the ton would weigh nothing. Prior to stopping, it would oscillate between China and America until retarded and at last stopped by friction of the at- mosphere. It is a familiar fact that the diam- eter of the earth at the Equator is greater than it is at the “flattened poles,” owing to the centrifu- gal force of the earth’s revolv- ing on its axis. Centrifugal force operates on all matter as well as upon the earth, so that a ton of fron at the uator, at sea level, if taken to the North Pole would be found to weigh 10 pounds more than it does at the Equator, not because there is less specific gravity in the earth under it at the pole, but because at the pole there is no centrifugal force tending to counterbalance gravity. Centrifugal force varies, increasing toward the Equator, and increasing upon the peaks of high mountains, as compared with sea level. Like thel “cracker” in the childish game of ‘crack-the-whip,” the longer the radius of the whirl the greater is the force tending to drive the “‘cracker” out into space. In the earth the force of gravital attraction is thus neutralized by the centrifugal force. A ton, weighed at sea level, would be so| pulled by centrifugality against its| gravity that if taken to the top of Pike's Peak and weighed on spring scales it would be found 3 pounds light. * ok ok ITH such counterbalancing of gravity and centrifugality, how can Dr. Heyl weigh the whole world? It is a simple process and very ac- curate. There is a horizontal pendulum, ex- tremely delicate in balance, and sen- sitive, which constitutes the scales. On each end of the horizontally bal- anced and swaying arm is one ounce of goli—or sometimes platinum in- stead of gold. When that pendulum swings at a distance of one inch be- tween the gold and 140 pounds of steel, the mutual attraction of the metals pulls the pendulum ever so slightly, so that the gold and steel tend to approach together. The force of that attraction is less than the weight of a grain of fine dust floating ON, D. C., SUNDAY MAGAZINE SECTION The Sundiy Stare MORNID NG, SEPTEMBER 13, 192 Rilfasite, a mix{ure of store and 1ron hun~ dreds of miles inside the earii. between solid center-and owter cyust. in the air, but that force is meas- ured with inconceivable exactness. Knowing the weight of the gold and the steel and the attractive force— otherwise called gravitation—between those two masses of metals, it becomes merely a matter of the equation of four with the X representing the weight of the earth. The difference between the weights of the gold and the steel is to their mutual attraction or gravity as the difference between the size of the steel and thé size of the earth is to X. X is the result sought*—the weight of the world. The size of the world is known exactly by reason of many sur- The result of that caiculation shows that the earth is five and a half times as heavy as it would be if it were all water, not only on the surface, but clear through to the core. Hence there must be parts so much heavier than water, and heavier than the average of the whole earth, as to make up the average weight. That part of the interior deep below the surface—1,000 or 4,000 miles down —is supporting all that is above it. It is calculated that every square inch, half way down toward the center, bears a pressure of what is above it amounting to more than 3,000,000 at- mospheres. As the atmospheric weight upon each _square inch at sea level amounts to 15 pounds, 8o a square inch 2,000 miles down must be bear- ing a weight or pressure amounting to 45,000,000 pounds, apd at the center of the earth, in order to have the ‘weight necessary to make the whole earth weigh five and a half times water, it will be necessary to com- press metals to only about two-thirds their bulk to make their weight, in proportion to volume, sufficlent, on the assumption that the whole core— half the diameter of the earth—is solid nickel iron. How much nickel iron might squeeze and compress under a weight of 45 000,000 pounds, or double that weight, to the inch cannot be demonstrated. The Geophysical Laboratory has a press capable of putting on a pressure of 300,000 pounds to the inch, but that canpot condense iron, or_any, other » metal or stone, more than 2 per cent instead of 33 per cent. Dr. Adams and his associates are devoting much time to testing the compressibility of various metals and rocks. It is con- cluded that within the fron ball must be masses heavier and harder than iron. 7.84 and nickel iron 13. There is dia- mond, which is the most uncompress- ible substance known. What a chance to dream of a dia- mond center, hundreds of miles in diameter, set in a pendant, with gold or platinum ornamentation! Gold welghs 19.3 times water, platinum 21.5 heavier and osmium 22 vier What gang of blast that treasury and what would happen if they succeeded ‘'in bringing up the loot? No market could absorb the oversupply, hence all values would be destroyed for all gold and jewels in the world. Dr. Washington of the Geophysical Laboratory contended for many years that the weight of the world made it certain that the core must be of solid gold, which is nearly twice as heavy as iron, but now he is willing to modify his “gold standard.” A FTER “convection” of the solar gas _had continued about 20,000 years, all the gas had solldified, and the solid earth was oaly about 8,000 | miles in diameter, in Place of the mil- lions of miles’ diameter of the original as. 7 Thus was formed the earth, solid in the center, entirely covered with wa- ter, boiling hot, and, above the water, impenetrable clouds of steam. “And darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and the vapor of the boil- ing oceans hid the sun and stars, un- til, through radiation of the heat into space, the oceans cooled. “And God divided the light from the darkness’—the clouds rolled back— “and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.” “‘And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place,’ and the dry land appeared, and it was so."” At some time in the process of the solidifying of the earth, either the, Pure iron's specific gravity is | Science Records Incidents of Greatest Robbery Ever Known, Causing Panic Throughout Solar System, When Sol Lost His Ring and Fought for Its Recovery——~How the Sun Attempted in Vain to Vulcanize the FragmentSv-5econd Bold Raid Made Upon Earth, Perhaps by Same Robber Star—Tale of the Upheaval Which Resulted in Creation of the Moon and Caused the Pacific Ocean to Become a Feature of the Globe. No Clue to Celestial Highwayman. Interior ) 1l is i 1-iron, mixi Omtial Hack o pidn ilon it lights of vibratory waves of an eartis- uake through interior of the. gu{cie» fepregen:(.se gidtk?lef?z:wA - FICTION HUMO AND R with surface. Angle of ‘Incidence same conspirator star which had un- dertaken to steal the souvenir from the sun, or some other star, prepared to steal from the earth, if not purloin the entire earth from its solar orbit It united forces and pulled by com |bined gravitation until it not only made a tremendous tidal wave in the oceans, but even distorted the round and rock-ribbed earth inclosing the great iron ball like a thick peeling. ‘The gravitation from the star, added to that of the sun, pulled so mightily that it actually tore loose a vast piece of the earth’s crust, including whole mountain ranges and cooping out a hollow into which rushed a mightier flood than even Noah saw. What 2 shaking of the earth! What thunder and roar of many waters! What a crash of mountains and col- lapse of strata! What a splintering of |the earth’s crust! The starry gravitation flung the mass of rocks, mountains and plains out into space, but before it had fallen clear away the gravitative arms of the earth reached out—just as had the gravitation of the sun after its lost gaseous ring. . The earth seized the loot of the rob- ber star and would have brought it back to fill the ocean bed, which de- veloped from the scar of the starry wound and which today is our Pacific Ocean. But by this time the stolen mass had begun whirling around the earth at a distance of 240,000 miles from center to center. There the mass has been swinging ever since, always with 41 per cent showing toward the earth, 41 per cent never seen and 1§ per N < | Into . perfe prairies, | cent oscillating, so that it is some- times visible and _sometimes not. That is the moon. When it first tore loose from the earth it was form- mass. but its own gravitation or tacy has smoothed and shaped it ly round ball, illuminated times by the sun, although sometimes the lighted part is on the side not seen by the earth, and the tllumination crawls around to our and gradually spreads over the earth- ward part and on around toward the other side every 27% days and nights. The moon has no atmosphere or an: moisture, hence no animal or vege- table life. The Man in the Moon is a humbug, hut not more so than the beautiful Lady in the Moon, whose fair profile, once identfied, is more distinct than is the cynical Man. the dark spots are really shadows of mountains and valleys, perhaps as out- gtanding as many of our own “eternal One of the wonderful mysteries of the universe is the fine balancing of forces—the counterbalancing of gravi- tation of the sun and of the earth all upon the moon, the counterbalancing of gravitation with centrifugal forces of the whirling masses. The mechan- ics of the heavens are beyond the comprehension of man. “And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night; He made the stars also.” * ok % x IR JOHN HERSCHEL has given an fllustration of the dimensions of | our solar and planetary system. Take for the sun a globe 2 feet in diameter. Mercury, thén, would be represented All arth, With Its Treasures, a Romantic Story |by a mustard seed on a circle (its orbit) 164 feet in dlameter, the sun | t its center. Ven 1 pea, 284 feet from the sun; the earth, aiso a p | 430 feet from the sun; Mars, a pin | head, 6 m the sun. Jupiter | and Saturn are orunges, Juplter being | & quarter of a mile and Saturn four | fifths of a mile from The nearest fixed i e, is distant f k )m our sun bout | 8,000 miles—not feet. The siar is the | center of another univ and it planets circle around it r sup. All the phenomena of « :5 of the carth relate to a period 2,000, | 000,000 vears ago. and sc | mines that 2.000,000,600 | great positiveness by me radiation of the c solar gas retaine | and also measurin | new heat from rac | present in all rc | heat tends to offset | original solar heat in o | so earth's core, that even fts 2,000,000,000 | years e center of the earth has not res 1 its temperature | one degree. | There is nothing t core. Volcanoes receiv fissures tapping the from chemical destruc face layers of rocks, any hell fires center of the It is a disc last 10 years t or 15 miles fron uranium, from v heat the cs. ace contair 1 radium spring; which is forever giving heat. The uranium changes into radium so slow 1y that in millions of years there i measurable decrease stance. The earth bottle, not a furnace. But for the conceivable pressure upon ev within the depths of would melt and liquefy at the te: ature of the ir 1 in the center of n the earth. Only 100 miles down the heat is over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit Scarcely older the knowledze of radium is recognition of the won- ders of the atom. Formerly it was thought that an atom was infinitely small and ivisible. that an atom is itself : true miniature of our solar In its center is the proton—a nu Now it is kn us, electrically positive. About the pro- ton are several negative units called electrons, revolving like planets about their proton “sun.” The electrons even smaller in proportion to orbits, and to their protons, than the solar planets in proportion to thei paths about the sun. The ance of the earth from the sun is only 93 times as zreat as t sun’s diameter bu the radius of an electron is hu as its cente proton. combination of proton’ to make one atom, Very recen s been 2 outside causes may knock flying electrons out of t moon away the rest us broken, is that alone, without be compressed together. condensed m of protons electrons lving about ‘Vhbrn would be as much denser than |any atomic mass as a diamond is denser than a sponge. Science has weighed the gravitative ;fnr'P of some stars and found them | so much more powerful in attract | than a mass of any metal known that | the only explanation given is that the “hlfll e largely composed, in their cores at least, of protons, unaccom- | panied by their revolving electrens. When men learn how to part elec- trons from protons they will have found power enough in a pint of | water to carry the Leviathan around | the world N H©W can science know that the core of the earth is nickel-i since there has never been a h bored deeper than a mile and a ha The deepest hole in the world is n Fairmont, W. Va., and the next deep- est is at Chelws o a mile deep. The temper: ton of the m Fairmont, is 1 almost hot enough to bo can science know anything about what is deeper? By means of an ir ich is used in recording smograph. nown that one may nce of a stroke of |lightning by noting the number of seconds elapsing een the sight of |the distant flash and arrival of the sound of its thunder. ht tray. els 186,000 miles a second. Practically it Is seen instantly. Sound, under o dinary conditions, travels through afir 1,088 feet per second. Seeing a flash, nd then waiting three seconds for the thunder, proves that the flash was three times 1,088 feet away—about three-fifths of a mile. When an earthquake strikes a lo cality there flow from it certain waves of vibration w! h are recorded upon seismographs in all parts of the world One wave travels with speed over th surface of the earth, and so rives at the seismograph quickly: another wave passes through the earth, upon tk chord of the geometric arc from th earthquake to the seismograph, and it is this interior wave which is | to the geophysicist investigatin density and nature of the matter through which it journeys. Its speed {varies from a mile to the second to a mile to a quarter of a second, accord- ing to the material density and nature wrough which it penetrates. The |denser the matter the more rapid the | wave. | A glance at a diagram of the world illustrates the chords of the arcs, and hows an arc from the earthquake to |a seismograph’ 3,000 miles away, and a | seismograph 6,000 miles from the {earthquake. A'straight line from the two extremities of an arc is called a chord. It will be seen that the chord of the 6,000-mile arc is almost, though not quite, twice the length of the chord of the arc 3,000 miles long. It the wave traveled along 6,000-mile arc’s chord at identi the same speed as it did along the shorter arc's chord, it would arrive i approximately twice the time it | takes 5 r selsmograph. is found, r, that the i terval s not tw trip—it is considerably shorter than twice the time. The wave over the longer chord passes much deeper in the earth. Sa, the scientist, knowing that the denser the material the swifter the wave, finds the density of the earth at any depth by the speed of the waves over the longer chords. If a wave from an earthquake is recorded on a seis- mograph exactly half mround the world, it must pass directly through the center of the globe and its time interval accounts for the density at the core's center. By such studies the interior of the earth is explored and the density and elasticity measured and the weight at all depths checked with the total weight of the world. The wave speeds lconfirm the weight of the worid, |and the tremendous weight of metal necessary at the center to make up the total average of five and & haif times the weight of water. (Copyright. 1925.) le water. How the R ool SR NSNS