HOW THE MOON WAS BORN.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 2779, 30 July 1907, Page 2

HOW THE MOON WAS BORN.

The theory is now generally accepted that the moon was originally part i of the earth, and had been separated I from it by centrifugal lorce. It this j be true we owe much more to the > moon than we have ever placed to her credit, points out Professor Wil- ; liam H. Pickering, in “Harper’s. Me ! owe not only the tides, hut the fact that the surface of the earth is not totally severed by water. The moon was born in this way: As the part of j the earth’s crust near the present j islands ot New Zealand began to rise, j in obedience to the centrifugal force | developed by the earth’s rotation, ; the crust on the opposite side cracked and split in two, formed the bed of i the Atlantic Ocean. Before the crack j could widen more than two thousand ' miles the pull became so intense that a huge, roughly circular piece, forming nearly three-quarters of the ' earth’s whole crust, was taken out of the middle and carried away to form the moon. This left a continent on each side of the Pacific, and the nec- | essity for two chief oceans instead of j one is made fairly apparent. It ■ seems almost impossible to imagine this throwing out of an area covering the ocean bed to form a new planet, this transportaiton i two continents through thousands of miles in the space cf a few minutes. Yyt to the I great celestial forces, whose effects we set' in daily operation in the heavens about us, not only such a result as I this, but even the crushing and utter | annihilation of our v.ny earth, would | he a mere bagatelle— an affair that, j might he accomplished in a few sec- ! oiuls. Even the flash of our funeral 1 pyre would hardly he noticed from the j nearest star. Owing our continents and ocean beds to the moon, our debt becomes very great. It the moon had not been formed at all. or il it bad carried away the whole of the terrestrial c-rust. our earth would I then have been completely enveloped 1 in its oceans, as may be the case with the planet Venus at the present time. .Our race could then hardly have ad- | vanned beyond the intelligence oi the | present deep-sea fish. It. on the' i other hand, the moon had been ol I hut a traction of its present hulk, or il it had been a little larger than it J is, our continents would have been I greatly diminished in area, and our j numbers decimated, or our lands over- ; populated.