THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2488, 5 July 1909, Page 8

THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH.

(By Dr. Andrew Wilson.) • I have been perusing in L’lllustratiou a highly interesting article written by the Abbe Th, Moreux on the future of the earth. This topic is one which represents the speculative side both of geology and of astronomy, those sciences which together deal with the earth’s evolution and with the subsequent changes our planet has undergone in the past, and of those it is day by day, undergoing at the hand of Time. The idea of our earth as a finished and perfected orb has long since been renounced by science; indeed, the sciences just named owe their very existence to the fact that they chronicle the alterations which the planet and our earth constantly exhibit. The Abbe Moreux ventilates a new theory of the world’s becomings. He begins and ends with the agency of the sun as the real scource of the changes our earth displays, and indeed as the moving spirit in all the changes which characterise its biography. Illustrating his views by diagrams and charts, the Abbe succeeds in presenting at least a very fair ease in support of his views. His opinions will not be received without much comment and criticism on the part of scientists both in his own country and in other lands. By some, the Abbe’s theories will be scouted as improbable, and by others they will be dismissed with the remark that he has offered speculation alone in support of his opinions. None the less are our author’s ideas worth study. They are an honest attempt, at least, to predict whither, terrestrially regarded, we are going and hastening. He remarks on the particular shape of the earth. Contraction of its substance has caused it to take a shape of pyramidal form, with four faces and three summits or peaks. The faces are great ocean basins —those of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, and one in the Arctic Circle. The peaks ho places in Canada, the Baltic, and Siberia. The stability of the earth’s great ridges and basins is assumed , by geologists. Amid the changes which have occurred to the crust these features, forming what the Abbe calls the premiere ossature of the earth, have remained practica Ily unchanged. But the great lines of earth-fracture next claims consideration. There is depression following changes in the earth’s kernel or nucleus, and this movement gives us the ocean basins. There are lateral forces which heave up ridges and fracture the earth’s crust, and it is along the lines of fracture that, as the Abbe shows and illustrates, we find situated the incs of volcanic action such as geologists have mapped out. These lines take three chief directions. Volcanoes, we are shown, show a distribution in three areas—namely, along the west coast of America, from north to south of Europe, from Iceland down through France, Sicily, and onwards to Africa, and from the East Asian coast southwards to Japan and New Zealand. In another way the Abbe shows that the zones of earthquake action correspond very much with those of volcanic development, save, as he remarks, that they occupy a very much larger surface than do the latter areas. We come now to the more particular and essential features of the Abbe's theory of our earth’s future, and of the causes which in his view will bo responsible for whatever dismemberment, our globe may suffer in the future. Earthquake shocks are very frequent. Big and small, they number about 30,000 per annum ; but, as the Abbe remarks, these cosmic shocks now and then seem ; to occur in increased force, as if a kind of periodicity marked their development. They are more numerous in winter than in spring, says our author,- and more frequently happen by night than by dayRelying on volcanic and earthquake action—practically both manifestations of the earth’s internal heat—the Abbe Moreux asks what conditions may be regarded as standing in the relation of causes to tire periodical distribution of earthquakes. His reply is that the atmospheric electricity holds the first place and rank. As the terrestrial electricity is due to the sun, the Abbe concludes that it plays an important part in determining the times and seasons of our earth’s disturbances. It is in the enunciation of his views regarding the effect of solar electricity in producing periodicity of earthquake action that the Abbe may expect to encounter the greatest degree of opposition to his theory. He gives a diagram of the prevalence of sun-spots, and of volcanic eruptions from 1760 to 1900, and remarks that volcanic activity is least developed when the sun-spots are at their maximum—a point, however, one may add, which is not quite borne out by the chart in its later details. The atmosphere, he holds, corresponds to the investment of a Leyden jar, the crust is the jar itself, and the internal “charge” is represented by the subjacent “inagria,” or mass, which ho regards as formed by liquid iron and gases in greater part. Thus influenced, as a great electrical storehouse, by seasonal variations depending on the sun, the Abbe holds the earth to be at the mercy of the great orb of day in respect of its earthquake shocks, and concludes that the terrestrial outlook is anything but bright. Along the European line of earthquake and volcanic action, the Abbe predicts we shall find future devastation of terrible kind, 'it is France he fears for most, because it lies in the track of likely disturbance. A map of Europe is given as it is now, and as the Abbe thinks it will be reproduced when volcanic force has had its sway. Oar own islands are seen to be devastated, while "la belle France” has practically disappeared. The fate of the 'world was of old believed to be that of being burnt up with fervent heat. The Abbe thinks the sun and solar electricity will cause its end.