THE MAN IN THE MOON

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 21

THE MAN IN THE MOON

WHAT MADE HIM J Scientists have held and given one theory after another about the creation of the Man fh the Moon, and now Dr L. J. Spencer has given good reasons for going back to an old one. The marks on the moon are the .splashes of meteors falling from space into the moon’s surface strata.

The great objection to this theory used to bo that since the falling masses 'of iron would come at the moon from all directions many of the marks of contact should be oval instead of all being circular. The answer to this has been found by comparing the lunar craters with one or two early meteor scars. In Australia and in Arabia the ground was churned up by a falling star ages before man, and there you can see the scars to-day, and they are quite circular. Why ? Because theses marks are nob the marks of contact, but of the explosion which followed when the terrifically

hot mass buried itself in the ground and burst. WHAT SLOW MOTION REVEALS. If you could,, see by slow motion a drop falling into water you would find that an instant after it buried itself beneath the surface a central cone of water was thrown up surrounded by a round trough and a wall. Here you have the lunar crater in miniature. The meteoric craters in Australia and Arabia show that the heat of the meteor was so great that it did not merely melt the sand, it boiled it. Now it is estimated that 20 million

meteors strike the earth every day, but thanks to atmosphere they ar* burned up before they can do us harm by striking our cities.- The moon haa no atmosphere, and therefore no pro* tection against the celestial bombardment. Only one point puzzles astronomers, and that is: Why are there no more craters being formed on the moon now? Has the solar system been swept clean of the bigger meteors? With possibly one exception there has not been the slightest change on the moon’s surface since mankind watched her face first through telescopes.