RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 51, 24 November 1930, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (Bt Kickshaws.) “I shrank then, as I do now, from exposing the secrete and sensations of Life. Reticence should guard the soul, and only those who have compassion should be admitted to the shrine.”— Lady Asquith. * Finding a needle in & haystack or a piece of silver lost in a lot of bulrushes is easy compared with finding a squeak in a car.—“ Liberty Press.” • » • In Ur of the Chaldees the excavation season ended with the discovery of a massive structure having walls twenty feet high, which the explorers describe as a temple built by Nebuchadnezzar. It was nothing of the kind; it was a tariff wall for the protection of the Babylon ian farmer. —Anon. • * • A gentleman who signs himself “W. White —Should be Green," says regarding coloured mudguards: “Attention has often been called to mistakes made by great writers. The first paragraph in Random Notes of Friday takes tbe cake and also the bun. To allot Eastbourne ‘blue’! ye gods! Is there another man (or woman or child) in New Zealand who knows not that the only colours allowed in our fairyland are green and yellow? Tennis, Rugby, Soccer, cricket, hockey, basketball, croquet, bowls —all yellow and green. Even our hills are covered with our colours—not to mention our faces, when things go wrong—yellow and green. Your crime is serious —it is left to ‘Kickshaws’ to make amends—may I suggest a good spot of the yellow stuff with the green label?” <■ « • Plans for an Anglo-American air mail line across the Atlantic have been made. After Spain the route goes via the Azores and Bermuda to Charlestown, on the coast of the United States. This route has already been flown on numerous occasions. Any lone sailor, such as Gerbault, will tell you that this westerly run finds the Atlantic in one of her kindest moods. Storms are few and far- between. From a sailing point of view, lack rather than a surfeit of wind is the main trouble. For the most part what wind there is comes from a westerly direction, except on the initial leg to the Azores, where the win lis mostly northerly. In the vicinity of Bermuda the prevailing winds are either northerly or southerly, much the same as in this Dominion. Indeed, they blow quite as strong, if not stronger. At certain times of the year, especially in August and September, the ocean to the west of Bermuda Iles in the hurricane area. It is doubtful if any seaplane could survive one of these. • V • One must indeed admire the promoters of the proposed Atlantic air service for the undertaking of their scheme. It is by no means as simple to Institute a trans-oeean service as might be expected at first glance. The distances themselves are admittedly within present-day limits of aviation. The hop from Spain to the Azores is only some 900 miles. The central portion of the flight from the Azores to Bermuda, however, Is 1500 miles. Bermuda is only a small dot of a place a few miles wide, and perhaps twenty long. Very careful navigation will be required to make a landfall at all. Under certain weather conditions Bermuda Is extraordinarily difficult to pick up from the sea, being lost in a curious thin haze that looks like ocean. The last leg to Charlestown is slightly shorter than the first leg, but more stormy. One would certainly feel safer if some sort of floating harbour could be anchored on the Atlantic divide, 6000 feet deep, that cuts the route roughly midway between the Azores and Bermuda. » » » Professor Kovarik, of Yale, announces tbe age of the world to be 1,852,000,000 years. He bases his calculations on the disintegration of radio-active materials. Without wishing in the least to disbelieve this good gentleman it must be realised that his conjectures curtail accepted outside limits of the age of the world by one or two thousand million years. There have been, indeed, many theories as to the age of this world of ours. The bare half-truths of the controversy may be summed up as follows: The earth condensed at the start from spare vapour torn from the sun by the attraction of some passing star. • » • In a matter of centuries the vapour that was to become our world liquefied. After another few thousand years an outer shell formed round tbe world and the atmosphere took shape. It only required a few more years for the world to cool down to present temperature. Before this occurred and while the world was yet liquid the moon was born. Just how long ago this took place has been computed by many different methods. They all give different answers. The simplest method is based on the amount of salt the rivers have washed into the sea. This method puts the age of the earth at a mere 300 million years. Calculations based on the rate of cooling of the sun and the rate of cooling of the world give an answer of 27 million years. It was once thought, erroneously, that the sun would cool down in another 20 million years. • • • Radio-active investigations have proved that these calculations fall far short of the correct figure. The sun, for instance, is over 100.000,000,000 years old and good for as much again. These radio-active calculations arcbased on the time it takes for a given quantity of radium to turn into lead. The lead so produced has a different atomic weight to normal lead. It can therefore be distinguished from it. Measurements < geological time by this method put the age of the world at 1500 million years, and indicate Hint the coal measures were laid down 250 million years ago. Another method based on these principles puts the outside limit at 3000 million years. • • • The public have therefore a wide choice as to the world's age. Evidence from tlie alterations in he orbits of certain planets goes to show that 3000 million years must be somewhere near the mark. Calculations based on (be rate at which the earth is slowing down (the day becomes one second longer every 120,000 years) gives us an estimate of 4000 million years. The best that can lie said for the Yale professor’s recent suggestion is that it falls within the upper and lower limits of modern conjecture on the subjr-f. After all, this is more than can bo said for the ages f a good n’-Hiy modern women. O «> V !.mien with delicate dust from a flower, To the heart of another a pillager slips- ■ And a wonder is done in the plundering hour Of these my ships. —Grace Allen.