MANLESS MOON

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 December 1934, Page 12

MANLESS MOON

A NEW THEORY. The man in the moon isn’t in the moon at all, nor are all those cold and lonely-looking mountains, according to a theory propounded by Mr. Joseph Weisberger, Austrian astronomer, states the “New York Times.” Mr. Weisberger has published a book .called “The Riddle of the Double Planet, Earth and Moon,” in which he puts forward the theory that the moon, like the earth, is covered with an atmosphere, whose upper surface reflects the light of the sun in such a way that we can never see the globe it encloses. What they see is moon stratosphere, he contends. Mr. Weisberger bases his hypothesis on the observation that maps of the moon are exceedingly variable. Lunar geography, ho says, is very vague and show a picture of the moon greatly different from the one it caught to-day. What one sees, he says, is an everchanging atmosphere shell about the moon, and it may no more resemble the real object than the prickly hull of a chestnut resembles the smooth brown object inside. Due to the rotation of the moon, the surface of its air cover has assumed the form of waves and spirals of varying density and depth, which resemble mountain chains and craters, not entirely unlike the surface of a cloud on which one may look down from a high mountain peak. The author of this .theory thinks it is substantiated by the character of the shadows in the moon. If the mountains there are really as high as scientists believe, they would cast long and dense shadows, he thinks, which would make the edges of the moon dark and jagged like a saw blade. But just the opposite is the case, he asserts, for the brightest part of the moon is near the circumference.