VAGARIES OF THE MOON

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3941, 18 August 1937, Page 2

VAGARIES OF THE MOON

ASTRONOMERS’ CURIOUS DISCOVERIES. Astronomers have made several curious discoveries lately, Dr. H. Spencer Jones, the Astronomer Royal, said in his report at Greenwich Observatory recently:— The moon is moving off its calculated course. The deviation continues to increase, and is now greater than at any time since 1680. On five days in the year ended April 30 Big Ben was more than a second wrong. To a “Sunday Express” correspondent afterwards, Dr. Spencer Jones said that the vagaries of the moon had proved that the earth was a bad timekeeper. “The day—the time the earth takes to revolve on its own axis—is gradually lengthening,” he said. “It is due to the fact that the friction of the seas on the ocean bed have a braking effect on the earth and slow it down.” The conclusion that the earth is a bad timekeeper upsets ideas about clocks. Astronomers are experimenting with crystal vibrations, trying to produce the perfect clock, independently of the earth. They are able to measure time within an error margin of less than a thousandth of a second a day. But they are not satisfied.

Other interesting points in Dr. Spencer Jones’s report were:— Sunshine in the year ending April 30 last was the smallest for 40 years; Atmospheric pollution at Greenwich was 25 per cent, worse than in the previous twelve months; and Rainfall from January I to April 30, 12.85 inches, had never previously been approached in Greenwich Observatory records for the same period. Big Ben does not receive automatic correction signals, but is corrected by hand.