END OF MANKIND.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3382, 29 September 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

END OF MANKIND.

WHEN AND HOW OUR RACE WILL DIE OUT. s ~ VIEW'S OF ASTRONOMERS AND OTHER SCIENTISTS. s (By J. E. W ATKINS, in New Orleans " Times-Democrat.") The und of the human race! How and when will it ultimately come about? This 11 startling question 1 have lately put to emi- ' nent men of science. 1 That man has but three million more years to live is the opinion given by Dr < T. J. J. See, the well-known astronomer of the naval observatory. At the end of that time the sun, which has already expended eight-ninths of its energy, will ' have exhausted its other ninth, and it will , have burned out. The whole solar system will then be bathed in perpetual night. > The earth and its sister planets will con- :• tinue, however, to travel on their orbits - about the darkened sun. The latter will s still be the oentre of the solar system. Man might continue to live in darkness ! if absence of his daylight supply were the - only effect of tho sun burning out. Within • 300 years, not to mention 3,000,000, man will have leanned to manufacture artificial daylight, but when the sun's light goes ( out its heat will go with it. The , extermination of all earthly life, : such as now exists, will, in Dr See's . opinion, result from cold. At the present time, he thinks, the sun is growing hotter. It probably will become twice as hot as it is now before beginning to cool, but this does not meant, that it will give the earth twice a-s much heat as it does now, or that in summer thermometers will . eventually go up to 200deg in our zone. With the sun twice as hot the earth might even be cooler than now. After doubling its own heat the sun will begin to lose it. The cooling and darkening of the earth will then be gradual. There will be no sudden catastrophe marking the extermination of mankind, and of other forms of life, the astronomer says. The great oceans will slowly freeze over. They will ultimately become absorbed by the land. Later, our atmosphere will cease to be vapour, and will lie like snow upon the earth's crust. END OF MAN IN 3,001,900 A.D. But why should! we worry ? Assume that the last earthly mortal freezes to death in the year 3,001,900 A.D. What relation will he l)e to his ancestors of to-day? Next, presume that tho average generation will continue during these thirty thousand centuries to measure thirty years, as now. Now take a slip of paper a jnjl© and a half long and write upon it the word " great " 99,998 times, side by side. At the end. write " grandson." Thus 1 you have this last man's approximate relationship to his present ancestors. " But is not a comet likely to hit us at some time before these 3,000,000 years shall has passed?" asked Dr See. " Suppose it did. It mifht knock down a skyscraper or two. Nothing worse would happen," replied he. " Are we not liable at some time to collide with another planet?" "We find that the entire solar system is coßtinually hastening in the direction of the constellation of the Lyre. ' That distant group of planets you can now see almost directly overhead. When we ultimately reach them we shall probably pass through without damage. There is ono chance in a million that we will strike one of their number. Of course, if we collide with a body relatively great in extent it may sweep us entirely aw«.y from the sun. But it will take ages and ages before we will ever reach this constellation. Wo are quietly moving through space, and if any disturbing element appears directly in our path astronomers will give the signal many centuries in advance of our reaching it." "Lord Kelvin thinks that there is only enough oxygen in our atmosphere to last mankind same three hundred years. How about that ?" " Plant life will continue to convert our car-onic acid gas back into oxygen, as it has done for ages. The earth's" vegetation will not decrease as civilisation advances. The destruction of our forests will never be effected so long as man's intellect improves. Such vandalism will be prohibited by law, and some day mankind will see. the necessity of re-planting mighty forests. Moreover, I think that the human race will always centre in the temperate zones. Ponu--1 lation will never materially- increase in the tropics. The jungles and thick vegetable • growths of that belt will flourish more and more, breathing out increased oxygen. Furthermore, the burning of coal, which process consumes vast quantities of oxygen, will cease. Solar engines, storing up vast quantities of the sun's heat, will, within the next century, supply us with electricity. It will no longer be necessary then to consume extravagant quantities of oxygen." KA'RTH WILL BECOME LIKE MOON. " Billions of years. Nothing more definite." Such is the lease given to earthly life by Astronomer George A. Hill, also of the naval observatory staff. "The earth will ultimately become like the moon." he continued. "All wattr on our planet's surface will gradually dry up. We will Ki'iiw colder ami colder as" a lesult of a loss of our moist atmosphere, which acts as a blanket holding our heat back and preventing its «scapci into space. Our oceans will ultimately lie dry abysses. All animal and vegetable life will, of course, go. Mankind will Ik- drit.l up or frozen out. After moisture and vegetation vanish there will be untiring left to keep the earth's crust dark. It will turn white, like the sands of our deserts, as it dries. Snow will '•ease. There will be no electricity, no thunderstorms." " Isn't there a possibility that some other c.ilamitv will meanwhile put an ind to earthly 'life?' "There axe two catastrophes which might occur. Th»' earth mijilit lose- its present position in the- solar system, or it iniight be converted into n burning ball, glowing with lire. Eithir tfftct must result from the earth's or flu- sun'.s collision with some other body in spacv. A comet hitting us? No. 1 think that would have little effect. A comet hitting the earth would produce about the same relative shock as a feather hitting ;i Kiselwll. A comet i» a gaseous substance \\V went through the tail of one in 1883, when Hawaii's volcano went into eruption. The only effect was a hazint.% and nil glare in tlie sky. We did not seem to pa&s through this comet's nucleus — its central muss. To all appearances that apparently solid part was inimense. But when we came to weigh it there was nothing to it. It seem«d to be of the same 'material which composed the tail. There has never been record of a comet sufficiently large to knock the earth out of position. The largest would give ils a red sky, nothing nmrp strious. "An immense meteor would be more likely to end the earth than would a comet of any size. Suppose our planet were struck by a meteor one-half its size. There may bo meteors of such magnitude. If there can be small ones there c:m probably be large ones. The largest which have struck the earth within historic times have weighid but a few tons. Such bodies falling upon our surface might kill ono or two persons. Nothing more serious would result. In space there have been meteors apparently as large as the great planet . Jupiter. * But they have been probably leas than 200 inilcs away and something like ten feet in diameter. But if a large one . should knock the earth hard enough to change its present balance, the sun's jjrtat attraction would probably draw our planet, in. Then we would be* fri/.zltd up. A ; meteor one-half the earth's side and weight might accomplish this. It might take a year before we ultimately reached the sun, ' but, we would bo destroyed before we got half way there. [ OUR CITIES MAY FLY OFF IN SPACE. I '• At- "15.000.000 miles, or half the distaiTiro i fuini the sun, tlin earth's temperature would > rise probably to 500 or 600deg. No life could i, withstand such heat, of course. Should the [■ earth stay at this distance a year would be 5 but three months lonor. Our velocity would be. four times as fast as it is now. We

would buzz around at the rate of seventytwo miles a second Our buildings aJid all loose objects woiild probably be thrown off into space by centrifugal force. As for ourselves and all other animate objects, they would all have been obliterated by the heat. " I said that the earth might also strike something so hot as to actually set it on fire. In such an event it would never burn up entirely. It would go from an incandescent to a gaseous form, and ultimately cool down into a solid again. There is nothing lost in nature. Fire could not extinguish a planet. " Yes, it is true that within millions of years we will either strike or pass the constellation of the Lyre — sometimes called the Harp — now overhead at about 10 p.m. That group of stars is an independent solar system from fifty-five to sixty billion miles away. It takes a ray of light eighteen years to travel from their sun to earth. When we look at that sun now we see it as it appeared in 1882. If it should suddenly disappear to-night we will continue to see it until 1918. Whether any of the planets in this constellation would strike the earth before they would hit the sun or other planets of our solar system, would depend upon what side of the sun we happened to be at the time. If Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter or Mars were on the side nearest the approacliing constellation they might encounter one of its planets four months before the sun would. If our sun thould strike the great sun of the I^-re, the shock would probribly throw us immediately into their combined mass." Professor W. J. McGee considered • the question from the standpoint of an ethnologist and geologist. " I can see nt> probability of man's ultimate annihilation from any c-.uise," s^aid he. " Were it not for the great factor of intellect, the last human being on this plarnet would probably freeze to death. From age to age the quantity of ice on the surface of our globe increases. Moreover, the continents are growing and the oceans shrinking. The earth is gradually drying as well as freezing. MAN WILL WARM THE FROZEN EARTH. " But intellect will not let the entire earth freeze, and thus exterminate the human race. As soon as man becomes thoroughly dissatisfied with the earth's temperature he will change it to suit his needs. A century hence man will live all over the world. In the polar regions he will warm the temperature around him ; in the tropics he will cool it. " Intellect will extract water from the rocks alter they have absorbed all of the earth's moisture. We can extract water from rock now, but the process is both expensive and unnecessary. As the oxygen in the air becomes exhausted, intellect will make some more. Do we not manufacture it now ? It also can be.extracted from rock. We do not thus produce it because the process doesn't pay now." " Has it not been estimated that there will be standing room only on earth in the year 3148?" "Nonsense! Intellect does not let such catastrophes as that occur when it can prevent it. It may suffer considerable shock, but it ultimately protects itself." "Can you think of no sudden catastrophe which might possibly end the earth?" " The impact of our sun with some other sun or star is more apt to work havoc with the earth than any other possible event. The mass of the sun might be thus increased to such a degree that t{ie earth's orbit would have to change. If the sun came in contact with a body of equal size, and if its force of gravity or attraction for the earth were thereby doubled, the whole solar s-<t-tem would probably be broken up. To balance itself, the earth would have to fly away to a greater distance, or, as is more probable, it would tumble into the enlarged sun. We have lately learned that the sun is not stationary, and that it is describing a path tow.iTd the constellation of the Lyre. Now, the other apparently fixed suns or stars in the sky are in /notion also, but each is going in His own direction and at its own rate c\f speed. These movements threaten collisions from time to time ; such collisions have, apparently, resulted within the historic period. " NEW RACE TO REPLACE MAN. Thaft man will entirely disappear from the earth, and that evolution will meanwhile have produced, from his stock, a higher race, is the original notion of Dr Theo N Gill, the great biologist of the Smithsonian. " In the course of untold time," said he, " man must develop into a creature as different from what he is now as is the ape ancestor from which he sprung. This evolution will depead upon future changes in tho surroundings of earthly life. The system of man's offspring will re-act to meet them. What these conditions can be I cam ot foresee. If the earth gradually dries? Well, then this descendant of man, whatever creature he may be, will have adapted himself to much less water than man now requires. Life would be possible under sneh conditions. The desert animals live on very litt!o water. Rats and mice of the desert do without it for long intervals. The camel stores it up for future needs. No, I do not think that this new creature to succeed man will have a stomach like that of a camel. If the earth cools? This new being will simply take on more clothing, will eat mora oil and will live generally as the Eskimo does to-day. No, I do not think that he would grow hair over his entire body. Neither do I think that he could develop into an aquatic animal in case water should cover the earth's surface. With the slow encroachment of the water, this new race would retreat until the last bit of land disappeared. After that, sooner or later, the whole race would have to give up the ghost, " Suppose there w.ere another glacial epoch, you ask? In that event a greater part of man's offspring would retreat to the equator. Those 'left behind would either die or they also would assume life somewhat after the manner of. the present Kskimo. No, there is not the slightest danger that mammoth animals of any kind will ever develop and destroy either the human race or that which is to follow it. No animals of lower intelligence could effect such progress. Neither do I believe that disease microbes will ever get the better of posterity. Science will keep them in control. "Yes, I feel positive thut man, as we see him to-day, will become gradually modified into ;i different creature, and that remnants of our own race will eventually die out. Yet I think that man will be able to adapt himself to new surroundings and will remain as monarch of the world for ages to com?."