Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1919. DISTURBING PREDICTIONS

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1919, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1919. DISTURBING PREDICTIONS

In June last tke Rev. H. W. WebbPeploe; Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral, was reported by cable to have "caused consternation at a church gathering by predicting the end of the world on Slst December, 1929." The consternation evidently-did not spread far beyond the small circle immediately addressed, nor does the prediction appear to have ex- ! cited any general interest. Everything went on just as before; there was "still the same crush at the corner of Fen-church-street" j and the newspapers gave far less prominence to the statement at Home than it secured through the cable' service in our own country. Yet, according to The Times, Prebendary WebbPeploe had really given the world an even shorter shrift than the cabled report showed, and he had not been merely speaking of "the end of. the age," which to the theologian is something quitdistinct from the destruction of the world. It was nothing less than "the speedy end of the terrestrial globe" that the Prebendary had predicted, and it was to take place not in 1929, but at the close of the present year. The great change might indeed be "as near as any night or day," a statement which at first sight seems to make things worse, but really is, and has at every moment of the world's history been, scientifically correct. With a saving touch of humour the prophet concluded by urging his hearers, "not to be frightened, but ready." The advice is excellent, but how anybody silly enough to accept the crass absurdities of the prophecy could ,be expected to have sense enough to qualify their natural effect in the manner suggested is not easy to see. The prophet himself has since supplied the best corrective for his prophecy by declaring that he was misreported. That is mainly a matter between his own conscience and the reporters, and is of little concern to a world which has been so often blown up by the prophets as to assess them at their true value.

But the children of this world who merely scoff when the children of light play these pranks in fields where their spiritual gifts give them no special qualification, are not disposed to treat the prophecies of science with equal levity. •Such a prophecy, which has recently come> to us from America, has accordingly fluttered many who were only amused by Prebendary Webb-Peploe's effort. It would no doubt be a libel on the authority to whom the prophecy of solar trouble is attributed to recall that it was also in the same country that the great lunar hoax originated. That tissue of delightful absurdities was not merely a brilliant newspaper "scoop," which boomed the New York Sun in a manner unprecedented in those days (1835), but is said to have been even treated seriously, though sceptically, by one of the greatest astronomers of the day, M. Arago, of France. Professor Albert F. Porta is certainly not to be classed with the audacious journalist, who, in professing to describe the beauties of the moon, including even its reindeer, its sheep, and its flowers as revealed by Sir John' Herschel'a new telescope, had, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "borrowed his scenery from the 'Arabian Nights' and his lunar inhabitants from 'Peter Willdns.' " But it is in a scientific memoir that Professor Porta's thrilling discoveries have been announced, and neither the language nor the source suggests the calm disinterestedness of science. Just as Prebendary Webb-Peploe urged us "not to be frightened, but ready," so Professor's Porta's object, according to a San Francisco paper, is not "to be merely sensational or alarming," but to give us timely warning. He certainly succeeds in being "sensational," whether ho desires it or not. He tells us that, owing to a unique of the planets, a great sunspot .will be formed about 17th December, resulting in "a gigantic explosion of flaming gases, leaping hundreds of thousands of miles." This simspot will have "a crater large enough to engulf the earth, much as Vesuvius might engulf a football." This sounds like big business, but in the absence of the true standard of comparison, which is that of the normal operations of the sun itself and not the petty scale of the tiny speck on which we live, the effect produced by such talk is that ot journalism rather than science. More than forty years ago Professor Simon Newcomb used a similar comparison to illustrate what might perhaps be termed the cvery-day life of the sun. "When we speak," said Professor Newcomb, "ot eruptions, we call to mind Vesuvius burying the surrounding cities in lava; but the solar eruptions thrown: titty thousand miles high would engulf the whole earth and dissolve every organised being on its surface in a moment." The crater that would engulf tho earth like ,si football in therefore no new experience lor tho sua, ;T_q^i't^.w,qul_ be

but a mere speck in the mighty furnaces that he keeps going day and night and can be relied on to keep going for millions of years. \

But though this particular comparison of Professor Porta is fallacious,. he gives reasons for believing that the sun, to speak colloquially, is "in for a particularly hot time" on 17th December. Had he been a New Zealand authority he might have been suspected of political bias, but though he names the day he does not fix the hour, and it may be that he intends to let the polling pass in peace. The official count will, however, be seriously interfered with, for the climax of the trouble will last from the 17th to the.2oth. It is to the work of seven planets all pulling jointly on the sun that Professor Porta attributes the solar trouble that is to affect this planet with "gigantic lava eruptions, great earthquakes, to say nothing of floods and fearful cold." "The magnetic currents between Uranus and the six planets will pierce the sun like a mighty spear," and the sun will resent it in a way that will react upon us. This is exciting reading, but there is nothing to show that it is the verdict of science. We are quite prepared to back the sun against the League of the Planets, and we doubt whether Professor Porta himself is making a corner in asbestos or tarpaulins against the great day. The Greenwich Observatory has certainly not put its instruments into cold storage or fireproof safes, and we may be sure that it has better advice at its command than the American professor's. The local "sport" who offered to bet a "fiver" on the 17th being a fine day has at least as good a scientific backing as the latest scaremonger.