Public Ledger

The Moon a Dead Star.
[From the Providence Journal.]

The Maine Journal of Education has translated an article from the Cosmos in which Stanislaus Meunier gives some curious speculations with regard to the present physical condition of the moon. His theory is, and has the support of eminent astronomers, like Beer, Moedler and Arago, that the moon is a dead star. He draws this inference from a singular appearance upon the surface, which is called "grooves" by the physicists. These grooves have parallel sides nearly a mile in width, and from ten to one hundred and twenty-five miles in length. There are already ninety of them, and it is supposed that more are in process of formation. Reasoning from analogy, we must believe that at some period in the past the moon had an atmosphere and water, and also that on account of her inferior size she cooled much quicker than the earth. The water penetrating the crust had been absorbed as the decrease of the internal heat increased the thickness of the crust, until, long before the cooling process had reached the center the water had disappeared. The rock then solidifying, as the heat supply diminished, contracted in a manner resembling the appearance of basalt and produced the grooves into which the atmosphere settled. Hence comes the chaotic appearance of the moon, with its immense mountains, volcanoes and craters. Some astronomers have detected an appearance of action in some of the volcanoes; but the general opinion is that every vestige of physical life has long since departed from the surface of our satellite.

These theories are all very well when applied to our distant neighbor, the moon; but we cannot shut our eyes to the startling fact that the earth is undergoing a similar process of transformation. Geologists trace a close resemblance between the circles in the moon and the circles of granite and porphyry upon the earth. They have also discovered evidence of a fine stratification among the lunar mountains, while the volcanic formations bear a discernible analogy to those of Teneriffe and Palma.

According to the new theory, the following is the process slowly taking place on the earth's surface; for she, like her subordinate, is gradually cooling. It is estimated that one-fiftieth of the original ocean has been already absorbed, and that when the crust of the earth has become one hundred miles in thickness every drop of water will disappear. It is also estimated that the earth could easily absorb fifty oceans like those which now cover a large portion of the surface. All the water at present on the earth constitutes one twenty-four thousandth part of its weight, and once absorbed would become insensible to chemical analysis. The water being absorbed, the earth will crack open like the moon and form similar grooves into which the atmosphere will settle. Long before this era all life will have ceased.

Whether there is any truth in the new theory or not, we have no immediate cause of alarm; for the process will not advance enough to give the slightest record in the short span of a single lifetime. According to the experiments of Bischof, it will take nine million of years for the earth to cool down fifteen degrees. This loss is almost imperceptible, as the mineral heat adds only a thirtieth of a degree to the temperature of the surface. If this process is true of the earth and the moon, the same cause must produce the same effects in the other planets and satellites of the system. Even the great sun himself must be subjected to the laws which rule his subordinates. Therefore, the time must come in the distant ages of the hereafter, when the sun, planets and moon, losing every vestige of heat, will have absorbed every drop of water in their thickened crust, and will have imprisoned every particle of atmosphere in their huge fissures.

The solar system, now so grandly beautiful, will then be an assemblage of dead worlds, without a ray of light, without a wave of heat, without a drop of water, without a breath of air floating round in the immensity of space, bound together by the law of gravitation in the embrace of death.

It is not a pleasing speculation, if it is a philosophical one.