FROM EARTH TO VENUS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVIII, Issue 10984, 2 August 1927, Page 8

FROM EARTH TO VENUS

SCIENTIST LOOKS AHEAD. A hurried departure of most of the human race to the planet of Venus before the earth becomes uninhabitable is predicted by Mr J. B. S. Haldane, the distinguished Cambridge scientist, in a fantasy of the future which he has written for "Harper's Magazine." Calmly projecting himself some 40,000,000 years into the future, he imagines himself settled on Venus and relating the story of the earth's strange evolution. The trouble, it appears, w.as all due to the moon. By the year 5.000,000 the human race had reached perfection. Men lived about 3000 years and could do practically what they liked. "The tidal wave energy was now 50 million million horse-power. Large parts of the planet were artificially heated. The continents were remodelled, but human effort was largely devoted to the development of personal relationships and to art and music. Even pain had been abolished and activitv was turned to colonising other i planets. Two expeditions reached the moon and mapped out its surface, but they could not get back. More unfortunate, however, was the fact that the moon raised large tides on the earth Avhich tended to slow down the earth s rotation. , When all coal had been used up and tide engines were employed by power, the braking action became accentuated, fey the vear 17,000,000 or so the earth had so "slowed down that the day was as long as a month in 1926. Alter that the speed at whjehthe moon approached the earth became unbearable, and, after 254 failures, the humans landed oh Venus. Secure on Venus, the new colonv, having scientifically adapted itself to the new atmosphere and developed new senses, placidly watched the moon's collapse under the strain:— "The moon was now only a nrtn ot the distance from the earth when history began. It appeared twenty-five times as large as the sun, and raised the s>ea-level by some 500 feet about four times a vear. . . . The depression m the moon's surface facing the earth suddenly opened and emitted a torrent of white-hot lava. . . . Within three days the satelite had broken up into a ring of white-hot lava and dust, the last message received from the earth stated that the entire human race had retired underground."