Untitled

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18643, 21 December 1928, Page 11

The birth of the moon was only one event in a greater catastrophe. Our sun, after a relatively brief period, probably a few thousand million years or less, of youthful exuberance as a giant star radiating energy at thousands of times its present rate, settled down as a respectable dwarf, which it now' is, and has been through geological time. For many thousands of millions of years it probably shone as a lonely star unaccompanied by planets. . Then it appears to have passed near to another, probably heavier, star, which raised tidal waves in it. The detached cre3ts of these waves, or one of them, formed the planets, and it is fairly clear that the moon broke off from the earth within a few years of its formation. So the approximate dating of the moon’s birth gives us that of the earth’s. This is further confirmed by the eccentricitv of Mercury’s orbit, which is still far less circular than the earth’s, but is gradually settling down towards circularity. It can be calculated that it has not been going round the sun for more than ten or less than one thousand million years. Various other lines of evidence converge to a date of somewhere between 8,000,000,000 and 1 ,500,000,000 B.M. for the origin of the solar system.—J. B. S. Haldane, ijn ''The Outline.” I