Golden Age, April 1, 1931

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

in this issue

CONSIDER THE HEAVENS

NO MORE VACCINATION

CENSORSHIP IN OPERATION

ASTEROIDS

ELECTRICITY IN BRITAIN

"THY KINGDOM COME”

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every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XII - No. 301

April ls 1931

CONTENTS

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

What the Children Had to Eat , 437 Poor Pay of British Railway-

Workers ........ 438

Detroit, City of Homes .... 438

Man and the Machine . . 439

Canada Feeding Her Hungry . 440

Conditions in Kentucky" . . . 440

Feeding Starving Arkansans . 440

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Asteroids ......... 437

Chicago’s Huge Post Office . . 437

France’s Three Hundred Forts . 437

Grasshoppers Again on Move . 438

Professors Are Cleaning Up . . 438

Russia’s Huge Budgets .... 439

British Army Reduced by War

Films ......... 439

Russia May Succeed ..... 439

How the Government Spends . . 440 Decline of Mr. Hoover’s

Popularity ....... 440

Goldfish Slippers for Milady . . 447

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

5.38 Percent of Banks Failed . 437

New Durant Sleeper Auto . . 437 Bethlehem Stockholders Seek

Bonus ......... 439

What Service Did Corporations

Render? ........ 439

1930 a Year of Surprises . . . 440

Four Great Rail Mergers . . . 440

Electricity in Britain .... 447

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Censorship Again in Operation . 436

Virgin Islands Get Civil

Government ....... 437

Legalized Synagogue in Spain . 438

Graft in Highway" Improvements 439

Cash Bonus to Veterans . . . 440

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Tomato Growers Not Overpaid . 438

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Consider the Heavens .... 419

Goose Grease on Airplane Wings . 437

Experiments with Human Speech 438

Vitamin D Kills Mold Germs . . 439

HOME AND HEALTH

No More Vaccination in Victoria . 436

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Gold Rush in Australia .... 437

Extracts from Interesting Letters 441

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

“Thy Kingdom Come” ... . 442

Praying for Henry VIII’s Soul . 438

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The Golden Age

Vo’urae XII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, April 1, 1931 Number 301

Consider the Heavens

THE heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttcreth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There.is no speech nor language; their voice cannot be heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and re-joiccth as a strong man to run his course. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.—Ps. 19:1-6, R. V.

O Jehovah, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth; who hast set thy glory upon the heavens. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the' moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?—Ps. 8:1, 3, 4, R. V. .

The mind staggers at the thought of trying to set down in cold type something of the grandeur of the universe of God as it is revealed to us on a starry night, and as it is more intimately revealed by the telescope and the various wonderful measuring instruments of our day.

And yet it is a plain duty to try to do this, periodically, for there is surely not a class of people in the world busier than the men and women who are proclaiming lie incoming of the kingdom of God upon this earth, and most of our readers have little opportunity to study the physical heavens we now’ consider.

It is a good thing that millions of people are having their attention drawn to the physical heavens by means of the planetaria, now so popular. Fifteen German cities, including Jena, Munich, Barmen. Leipsic, Mannheim and Nuremberg, now have these large round-towered buildings whose ceiling is an artificial sky. The Chicago planetarium will be the star attraction of the World Fair of 1933.

•No one has ever seen a planetarium without wishing there were one in his own community. Science has reproduced in miniature form, for study purposes, some of the grandest phenora-ena of the universe. The sun sets like the real sun. Twilight fades into night as smoothly as nature’s twilight. Hundreds of stars blink out of the darkness. In a few minutes the planets, worked by machinery, travel orbits that in reality take 20 to 30 years. In a brief hour, aided by the well-informed lecturer, the visitor obtains a good knowledge of the interdependence, orderliness and unity in the Father’s house of many mansions, the universe of God.

But thousands of our readers may never see a planetarium. We have not yet seen one, ourselves, but understand that by means of projectors the illusion of the horizon and the starry heavens is made so realistic that it is hard to believe one is not out of doors. In this article we go out of doors, very much so.

March of Astronomical Knowledge

Today the ordinary people, uninformed technically, know less about the planets and the stars than did the shepherds of Palestine who made up Abraham’s army of 318 men. The crowding of hundreds of thousands into large industrial centers is largely responsible for this. The planetaria now becoming so popular will do something to offset this. Workmen, digging a cellar in Beutzow, Mecklenburg, a year or so ago, discovered an old observatory which archeologists declare dates from 1181 B. C. In this excavation a stone circle was found with markings on it showing the sun’s position throughout the year. The instruments, all of stone, were found in excellent condition, and a fair measure of solar altitude can be made with them even now.

Four centuries before Christ, without the aid of telescopes, and without any of the facilities we now have for investigation, the astronomers of Alexandria, Egypt, made such close observations and calculations that they were enabled to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic, to de-

termine the times of the equinoxes, and to detect their precession.

Two centuries before ' Christ, Hipparchus made with extraordinary exactness observations upon the courses of the sun, moon and planets, and determined the times of their revolution. Still later, Ptolemy discovered the evection of the moon, but, like his predecessors, he still thought the earth the center of everything and that the whole heavens revolve around it.

The true theory of the universe was promulgated by Copernicus in 1543. His two fundamental principles were that, instead of the diurnal motion of the heavens being real, it was only apparent, being due to the revolution of the earth on its own axis; and that the apparent revolution of the sun around the sky was, in the same way, due to the actual revolution of the earth around the sun, which latter remained at rest.

Fifty years later, with a telescope made of a piece of pipe organ, with a lens at either end, Galileo discovered the four satellites of Jupiter and proved that the Copernican theory is correct. The lenses in Galileo’s telescope were about one inch in diameter.

Newton to the Present

The inauguration of the present era of astronomical knowledge came later in the seventeenth century, when Sir Isaac Newton showed that the revolution of the planets in elliptic orbits, and the revolution of the satellites around their primaries, were all due to the mutual gravitation of these bodies, and took place according to the same laws that govern the motion of matter around us on the earth.

In 1776 William Herschel began to make telescopes much larger and more powerful than had ever been made before. In 1781 he discovered the planet Uranus. After his death his son, Sir John Herschel, continued his father’s work by means of reflectors, and in 1845 erected at Parsonstown, Ireland, a telescope that was for long one of the world’s wonders. Its mirror measured six feet in diameter.

As late as 1832 there were no observatories in the United States. The first photograph of a star was taken by the old daguerreotype process some time about 1850, at Harvard University., By 1880 photography had so developed that it could be used in astronomical work.

Today the Germans are generally considered the leaders in astronomical research, but America is forging rapidly to the front. At Mount'. Wilson, California, the largest telescope in the' world, with a reflector eight feet four inches in diameter, has just been replaced by one sixteen? feet eight inches in diameter. It is expected that' this new telescope, wThen fully installed, will settle for all time the presence of life on Mars and give us a more intimate acquaintance with... all the heavenly bodies.

The Astronomers' Work

Astronomers are described as ^sitting up all night and doing arithmetic all day”. No heat may quiver the air anywhere near an observa-' tory, as atmospheric steadiness is of the first consideration; hence astronomers make their observations in the cold. At the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin the cold becomes so intense that it is sometimes necessary to line the eyepiece with felt to prevent injury from contact with the cold metal.

This matter of the absence of heat around an observatory is of great importance, as may be-judged from the fact that at the Mount Wilson observatory the heat radiated by stars millions of miles from the earth is measured with an instrument made from the wings of a common housefly. A shred of a fly’s wings at the receiving end of a 200-inch telescope presents the maximum of contrast.

In the modern observatory the delicate instruments are kept at exactly the same temperature constantly by means of a heating coil wound around them. This is done so that the accuracy of the measurements may not be spoiled by contraction or expansion of metal parts.

The distances of the stars are measured by'' parallax. Look across a room and through window at the world without. Move the head a few inches from side to side. As you do- so the window bars seem to move to the right as you move your head to the left. The nearer you sit ■ to the window’, the more the window’ bars seem " to move across the landscape. If one can measure the apparent shift, geometry will give the distance to the point seen. ■

To imagine the heavens as they really are we would have to fancy the stars as always visible in every part of the sky. Then, by day, we should see the sun among the stars, and perhaps the<' moon also. We should find, too. that what oneh'-

seemed bewildering cbao'Sy- really runs with matchless system and order.

The Solar System

The bodies of the solar system are bound together by the law of gravitation,. Were it not for solar attraction each planet would cease traveling in an ellipse, but would fly off in a straight line through space. Through the attraction of the sun, all the denizens of our solar system are kept in their respective orbits.

The most convenient point at which to begin a study of our solar system is at the center of the- system, the sun, which, so the astronomers tell us, is 92,870,000 miles away. They do not ’know’just how far it is, but fix the distance as .somewhere between 92,860,000 and 92,880,000 miles. The mean of the two measurements is the present ‘'■'astronomical unit” by which, until recently, all stellar distances wrere measured.

The bodies of our solar system are distinguished from all other bodies in the universe by having our sun as the center of their motions. They are classified as follows: 1. The Sun. 2. The Planets. 3. The Satellites of the planets. •A. -The Comets. 5. The Meteors. 6. The Zodiacal Light. In this classification the Asteriods are a subdivision of the Planets.

The French mathematician Veronnet reported to the Academy of Sciences in Paris that among the planets of the solar system he finds equilibrium, a state in which the same things keep happening over and over without change, as the planets revolve around the sun, but that for the universe as a whole the mathematical picture is different. In other words, ip his judgment, the universe as a whole is relatively young, while our solar system is relatively mature.

The Visible Sustainer of Life

The visible sustainer of life is the sun. Excepting the recently discovered Millikan rays, it is, so far as science knows, the source or sustainer of all forms of energy on earth. Coal is stored-up solar energy; so is falling water; so is plant life, and animal life. All important varieties of energy used by man can be traced back to the sun. The sun is about 750 times as massive as all other bodies of the solar system put together; hence its attractive power on all these .bodies. .....

Some idea of the amount of solar energy thrown into space may be gathered from the fact that ..the energy radiated per square yard from the sun’s surface is calculated a& equivalent to 70,000 horsepower. This represents an amount of heat energy that -would. melt a globe of ice as large as our earth in two hours and forty minutes.

The sun is a globe 886,500 miles in diameter, or more than 100 times the diameter of the earth, and, therefore, more than 1,000,000 times its volume. If the sun were hollow and our earth ■were placed at its center, our moon could still revolve around our earth at its present distance of 239,000 miles, and would even then be only about half -way from the center of the sun to its outside rim, if there is a rim.

The Sun Is Hot

The surface of the sun is said to be hotter than the greatest heat attainable by even the electric arc. It is estimated as six thousand degrees centigrade. The surface heat of the other fixed stars ranges from three thousand to twenty thousand degrees; so it is among the cooler suns. The temperature at the center of our sun is placed at forty million degrees.

We have the proof of the heat of the sun in the fact that every drop that flows into the ocean -was lifted by it; it is in the cause of every change of climate; it provides life for every blade of grass and every leaf and flower that grows, and it does all this at a distance of 93,000,000 miles.

Every known substance of earth is vaporized before we get to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is thus reasonable to suppose that the sun is not solid, nor liquid, but in a gaseous state. The spectroscope discloses the vapor of iron and other refractory metals in the sun’s atmosphere ; and it takes a hot fire to make iron vaporize. The temperature of the sun not only does this, but the fact that the spectral lines of iron are dark on a bright ground shows that the solar light emanates from a body yet hotter than vapor of iron.

A study of the surface of the sun show’s changes going on which are incompatible with tfib idea of solidity. It follows that the heat radiated from the surface must be continually supplied, either by the rising up of hot material from the interior, or by radiation from within outward. The material of the sun is probably transparent, and it is supposed that the enormous heat is absorbed and reradiated as we pass outward from the center.

Rotation of the Sun

Like the earth, the sun turns on its axis ; but unlike the earth, the central or equatorial part rotates at a different speed from that of the polar part: the former in 24.9 days, and the latter in 26.4 days, at 30 degrees latitude. The study of the rotation of the sun has been under way at Mount Wilson for twenty years.

This manner of rotation suggests an electrical generator; and it is rather significant that Dr. Ross Gunn, research physicist of the United States Naval Research Laboratory, has advanced almost that view. He thinks that electricity under a pressure of 10,000,000 volts, about the same as that of a good lightning flash, is constantly flowing from inside the sun into space, and so heats the solar atmosphere to incandescence in a manner precisely as the filament of. an electric light is heated by the electricity flowing through it. In any event, it is quite certain that what reaches us from the sun is not heat, but electricity, and is turned into heat by friction wuth the atmosphere of our earth.

Besides rotating within itself, the sun also has its own proper motion; but this motion cannot be directly observed. The only way in which it can be detected is by the relative motion of other stars, just as we know that a railway train is carrying us along when we see houses and trees seeming to pass us. There is an average tendency of our solar system to move from a point in the constellation Lyra toward the opposite region of the heavens south of Sirius.

The Sun’s Tremendous Weight

Nobody has ever been down in the interior of the sun to find out just what it is like. In the first place the trip would be too expensive. If it were possible to speed through space at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour it would take sixteen years to make the trip.

A Princeton professor has figured out that if a man could get to the middle of the sun his refrigeration bill would cost $50,000,000 a minute to keep him alive, even if the cost of the current were only 1/1000 of a cent a kilowatt century. We have always wondered how some of these college professors spend their time, and now we know. Power Trust, please note.

We can only guess at how matter behaves at the sun, but we do know that its weight is 1.41 times that of water, and at the surface, if there is a surface, gravitation would be 27.95 times that at the surface of the earth; a woman weighing 100 pounds would weigh 2,795 pounds, and be instantly crushed by her own. weight.

The spectroscope was first used in the study of the sun in 1859, and the heliograph in 1891. As a result of the use of these instruments it is? now known beyond any question that there arc present in the sun enormous quantities of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, sodium, calcium, iron, nickel, copper and zinc; indeed nearly all the elements found on the earth exist also in the sun, except a few of the heaviest.

As a star, the sun is about midway in the scale of brilliancy. There are some stars that give 10,‘000 times its light; the bulk of them, give less. In mass, in surface temperature, in bulk, and in speed of motion, the sun is just an ordinarily well-behaved middle-class citizen of the heavens.

Photosphere, Chromosphere and Corona

Over the interior of the sun is what all see, the “photosphere”, a brilliant shining surface of white-hot gas, which is constantly boiling or surging up from below in great centers and sinking down around the areas, producing U mottled appearance like rice grains in soup. This is the surface in which the sun spots occur.

Above the photosphere is a red-hot atmosphere called the “chromosphere”, which shoots up in mountainous elevations, or erupts for one or two hundred thousand miles in monstrous spouts, clouds or plumes, shot up with lightning speed, and evidently borne aloft by the impulsive power of the sun’s rays. Such eruptions have been known to shoot out a blast of flame 330,000 miles long in one hour. ■

Above the chromosphere for a distance of 10,000,000 miles or more extends a soft, whitish light called the “corona”, which at times is uniform about the sun, and at times extends in only two or three directions. The corona seems to be composed of minute molecules of gaseous substances, extremely attenuated, like the wispy tail of a comet. Its appearance is beautifully described as “a complex glory of spaced polarrays, dark rifts, filaments, straight, curved, and interlacing, and stupendous synclinal structures with rich, nebulous mottling”.

No one can say for sure what the corona is. It may be an electric glow; it may be due to the recombination of disrupted atoms ejected from the sun at enormous speeds; or it may be some

kind of activation of loose.matter in space by waves of ultra-violet light or of X-rays or some other radiation emitted by the sun. A new wave length, in the spectra of the sun’s corona was announced as the result of observation of the solar eclipse at Niuafou Island, in the fall of 1930. '

Titanic Solar Storms

The titanic storms that rage on the surface of the sun are the most impressive celestial phenomena observed by man. These storms are nothing but hurricanes, like those that occasionally sweep through the Caribbean Sea; but instead of speeds of a hundred miles an hour, they move much farther than that in a second. Instead of being composed of air, they are hurricanes of flaming gases.

The solar storms range in diameter from the limits of visibility up to great disturbances more than a hundred thousand miles across. In these storms masses of vaporous heated materials, sometimes hundreds of times larger than our earth, are driven about at speeds reaching into hundreds of miles a minute. They are sometimes thrown aloft for distances of half a million miles.

These great storms modify to some extent the radiation to the earth. For example, it has long been noticed that the aurora borealis or northern lights are most frequent when solar storms occur most frequently and in greatest fury. These storms accompany the phenomena of A

Sun Spots .

Sun spots were first observed by the Chinese, centuries ago. They were deemed omens of exceptional Importance, but, of course, were not understood. When Galileo first pointed his telescope at the sun and discovered that it was now and then variegated by dark spots he was considered a dangerous man, corrupting the world by finding blemishes on the sun. A sun spot seems black only by contrast with the brilliancy of the sun.

Sun spots appear to be holes in the photosphere, down which hot outer gases rush at tremendous speeds toward the interior. They are rarely seen at more than 35 to 40 degrees of solar latitude, north or south, and are comparatively scartie al; the equator. They are most numerous at about 15 degrees.

The spots are of very different sizes, ranging from the minutest point visible in the telescope to a size so great as to be perceptible to the naked eye, though the latter generally consist of several of them w’hich are close together. The largest exceed the earth in diameter, the edges being frequently jagged and cornered, as if made by a shot or bunch of shots through a tin! plate or wooden plank.

Sun spots are quite numerous at times, ili maximum times coming at regular intervals ( 11.13 years, from which they decline in numbil? ■to a periodic minimum. The years of maximum number of sun spots are 1882, 1893, 1904, 1916, 1927, and 1938. The years of minimum number of spots are 1889, 1900, 1911,1922, and 1933. In 1919 there was one spot of 50,000 by 100,000 miles, the largest yet.

What the Sun Spots Do

It was at one time supposed that the sun-spot period of 11 years and 47 days coincides with the period of the revolution of Jupiter, but it is now proved that the period is more than six months less than that of Jupiter. In the popular mind they are often held responsible for the most impossible things. Thus, the World War and the Florida hurricane each culminated around a sun-spot maximum, and were held by some to be due to them.

That radio reception falls down appreciably during high sun-spot activity has been proved by investigations. The increased number of electrons fired from the sun during these periods ionize the upper atmosphere of the earth. Astronomers have also definitely ascertained that the following phenomena vary at the same time as the sun spots:

The feculae, or bright spots near the sun spots; the eruptions and prominences of the chromosphere; the form of the corona from partial shafts or arrowhead form with minimum spots, to a form well developed in every direction with maximum spots; auroras, or northern and southern lights; changing in the day and night fluctuations of the earth’s magnetic conditions; magnetic storms, ■which are greatest when sun spots are maximum; the earth’s average temperature, which is least when the spots are most, and varies regularly during the 11.13-year period by from .9 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

Says the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Many other terrestrial changes in rainfall, cloudiness, number of cyclones, panics, prices of foods, famines, growth of trees and even flights of insects have been seriously compared with sunspots, some, showing rather well-substantiated periodicity with the spots, and others probably with purely fanciful results/’

It seems as though to know the sun would be to know Him who is ‘wise in heart, and mighty in strength; who spreadeth out the heavens; who maketh star dusters [constellations] and the chambers of the south; who doeth great things past finding out; yea, wonders without number’. ■ —Job 9:4-10.

Astronomy at the Equator

There are some advantages in studying astronomy at the equator that do not apply at other portions of the earth. Let us imagine two persons, one at the north pole and the other at the south pole. There are two nights in each year when the days and the nights are of equal length at every point on the earth’s surface. Those nights are approximately March 21 and September 21, On the night of March 21 those two men are looking at a certain section of the heavens, each at a different part. On the night of September 21 they are looking at portions of the heavens which could not be seen by them on March 21 because of the bright light of the sun. Again they are each looking at different stars.

The inhabitants of the north polar regions and those of the south polar regions never see the same stars. But the man on the equator, by remaining up all night on those two nights, can see all the stars the heavens contain that are visible to residents of our earth. Astronomers make frequent trips to the Andes observatories because of this fact.

To one standing on the equator, or elsewhere at a distance from the poles, the stars seem to rise four minutes earlier each night than the night previous, so that in six months all the stars that were seen, on a given night have dropped below the horizon and are no longer visible.

This gain of four minutes each, day throughout the year brings back into visibility by the end of the year the stars that were visible the year previous. Thus the sun appears to rise 365 times each year while the stars appear to rise 366 times. This appearance is due to the actual revolution of the earth around the sun.

Standing on the equator and looking toward the north, the observer will see the north pole star just at the horizon; looking toward the

Bbooklim, N. X.

south he will see no such star, but will note that “the chambers of the south” (Job 9: 9) are relatively empty, as compared with “the sides of the north” (Isa. 14:13), within which are located ‘the gravitational forces of the star clusters [cimah (Hebrew), constellations]’ (Job 38:31), the abode of Him who “stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing-”. (Job 26:7) Who taught the Prophet Job astronomy?

We Jump to the Moon

From considering the sun at some length we now jump to the moon, Luna, but not in the same manner as the acrobatic bovine of childhood’s days made the trip. Ours is made mentally. It is quite a trip. If we flew by airplane at 100 miles an hour it would take us 99 days and .1.4 hours to: go one way, 239,000 miles.

The actual color of the moon is not white, but the dull brown of weathered rocks. The apparent silvery whiteness of moonlight is due to contrast with the darkened sky. Its diameter, 2,163 miles, is a little more than a quarter of that of the earth.

The moon gives out no light of its own: all the light that comes to us from its surface is reflected sunlight. This light in some places is so clear that some can see to read by it; and yet it is claimed that if the entire sky were paved with moons they would not yield over one-eighth as much light as is derived from the sun.

The surface of the moon is one-thirteenth that of the earth, and the portion that we can see when the moon is full is about twice the area of Europe. If the earth were cut into forty-nine pieces, all equally large, one of these pw-epc rolled into a globe would equal the size of the moon; but it would be much heavier, because the earth is more dense.

Hoiv the Moon Revolves

We always see the same side of the moon, because it makes one revolution on its axis at the same time that it performs a revolution around the earth. This surface which we see so constantly has been mapped by astronomers so carefully that we have better maps of it than we 'have of Africa. .

To understand the relative positions and movements of the sun, moon and; earth, -place:: a light on a table in the center of the room. Thu light is the sun. Stand a few feet from it. You are the earth. Stretch out your arm with an apple in your hand. The apple is the moon. Turn your apple straight toward the light: the moon is dark. Turn a quarter to the left: you see the light shining on one-fourth of the apple; the moon is in the first quarter. Turn with your back to the light, and your apple still extended straight in front of you: the light shines full on the apple; the moon is full. Turn another quarter-way around: your moon is in the third quarter. Turn the- remaining quarter, and you have completed one lunar day. The moon has shown all its sides to the sun; additionally, it has gone clear around the-earth.

For innately or unfortunately your body is .not arranged in such a way that you can hold the apple at a certain distance from you and in a certain direction from the light and at the same time spin around on your heels. Hence you cannot very well illustrate the fact that the earth turned about on its axis nearly thirty times while the hinar day aforementioned was in progress. The "man in the moon” must think us very restless indeed.

To carry the picture still further, you have to imagine yourself traveling around the table in your iko’l a t the same time that you are spinning around on your heels and meantime turning the apple slowly about you once every time you have spun thirty times on your heels. You manage to get around the table while you are taking about 365 spins.

.....Moreover, your path about the lamp would be, not a true circle, but an ellipse. Besides that, you would not stand straight up, but would be bent over slightly, and in addition you would wobble some, which would not be strange under the circumstances. And then, in fact, you would have to imagine the whole room, lamp and all, rushing at tremendous speeds in at least three directions, ahead, to right or left, and up and down. But we are ahead of our story. Let us get. back to the moon.

T h e Man and Woman in the Moon

---•The eyebrow of our old friend who smiles at us every night is 280 miles in breadth and 354 miles in length. And, by the way, did you know that at any time after the first quarter a most beautiful woman’s face can be discerned, not so large as the .man’s, face, and situated so that the back of her head is at the back of his? If you have never seen the woman in the moon, look for her, and be rewarded.

The features of the man in the moon are really great mountain chains, plateaus and volcanoes. Huygens, the highest mountain on the moon, is 18,000 feet high. This would be a high mountain even on the earth. Tycho, the great volcano, has a crater fifty-four miles in diameter and 16.600 feet deep. The hill about this volcano is nearly a mile high. <-:--

All the moon’s craters are named, and thousands of astronomers have pondered and dis? cussed their origin. Some hold to the meteoric bombardment theory. At Mount Wilson observatory a committee is now studying the moon, not by looking at it through a great telescope, but by throwing lantern slides on a man-made globe and then studying the globe.

Widely separated tribes, from the Eskimos to the aborigines of the South Seas, have their legends about the man in the moon. The Malays, for instance, believe that the marks on the moon represent a banyan tree under which a hunchback is sitting, plaiting a fish line. When the job is finished he will fish up everything on the earth: but he is out of luck, for a rat is constantly gnawing away the line, so that it is never completed. -

h There Life on the Moon?

Astronomers are divided as to whether there can possibly be life of any kind on the moon. Most of them insist that no life is possible because, say they, there is no atmosphere, no moisture of any kind. They judge this to be the case because the edges of the moon are always clear and sharp, and because it has been photographed thousands of times. The moon is near enough that if there were storm clouds sweeping over its surface they would be visible under the high-power telescopes now in use.

Another reason why, it is claimed, no life could exist on the moon is that its surface is subjected to such extremes of alternate heat and cold. The actual time from one new moon to another is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds. On the moon, half of this is night and half of it is day.

During the lunar day the temperature would approach that of boiling water, and for the other fourteen days it would be subjected to the intense cold of interstellar space. The instant the sun went down a man would freeze solid. The temperature of the moon during the darkest part of an eclipse has been shown to be 190 de-

grees below zero. What would it be after only one week of total darkness? ...

The absence of atmosphere on the moon is indicated by the fact that at the time of an eclipse of the sun the moon’s limb is perfectly dark and sharp, with no apparent distortion of the sun due to refraction. Similarly, when a star is occulted by the moon it disappears suddenly and not somewhat gradually, as it would if its light were being more and more extinguished by an atmosphere.

The Studies at Jamaica

If there is no moisture on the moon, no atmosphere, then its surface during the lunar day is subjected to the heat of the sun’s full rays without any interception; and the astronomers who hold to the no-life theory claim that the violent alternations of heat and cold which such conditions would bring about are enough to account for the phenomena which another prominent astronomer drew to the attention of his fellows some years ago.

This gentleman, studying the moon in Jamaica, where it is especially suitable to study it, and with a large lens provided by Harvard University, claims that while there is no general atmosphere on the moon, there are patches of atmosphere surviving within the great craters; that steam has been observed issuing from one of the craters; that snowstorms have been observed revolving within the craters of the volcanoes, and that in these craters he has observed crops of some sort grow, develop, mature, wither, and later come again to life.

He claims that these crops are two for each period of the moon’s intensely hot day: and he may be right. He tells of the changes of color just as might be expected in. growing and maturing crops, and reproaches his fellow astronomers for not having studied these craters with sufficient care.

All astronomers are forced to admit that craters on the moon have been seen to grow larger and then much smaller, and then to be obscured from sight altogether, only to reappear; also that small craters have been seen to appear which were not there befoi thus giving evidence that the moon is not so totally dead as some have supposed.

Exceptions to Above Findings r :

Those who disbelieve in the possibility of moon life suppose that the 'white patches which now and then obscure portions of the moon’s surface are clouds of gas which issue from volcanoes in eruption, and they believe that the alternate expansion and contraction caused by intense heat and intense cold are sufficient causes for the volcanoes; others think that these ‘wavy shadows’, as they prefer to call them, are the result of radiation from the superheated soil and deceive the eye. It can be almost surely predieted that there is no animal life on the moon: if is not believed that such life could survive the alternate waves of great heat and great cold.

It is claimed that gravitation on the moon is only one-sixth as great as it is on our earth; and that hence if there were humans there they would have to be light-steppers indeed, as a man putting his foot down violently would have no trouble in sailing easily over the top of a house.

The distance to the moon is measured by observing simultaneously the angle to a given point on the moon from two widely separated points on the earth’s surface. The triangle thus formed is solved by the aid of trigonometry,

February, 1866, had the unique distinction of being the only month so far in the history of the ■ human family in which there was no full moon. That same year, January and March had two full moons each. This will not happen again for 2,500,000 years, so it is claimed.

Lunar Influences and Variations

Old-time gardeners used to say that seed should be planted in the full of the moon, if it is to germinate quickly. Afterwards they were laughed at. Now science has discovered that a large percentage of the light we receive from the moon is polarized and that it does have a marked effect on plant life. The word “lunatic” testifies to the early belief of the influence of the moon upon the human mind. The w’ord means, lite raby, ‘One who is moon struck.’

The pull of the moon shifts the earth’s crust enough that the variation of latitude may amount. to as much as six feet. So finds Dr. Harlin T. Stetson of the American Astronomical Society.

Herbert Janvin Brownie, consulting meteorologist, Washington, D. C., attributes the drought of last year to the moon, working through its tidal attraction on the ocean. During recent months the relative position of earth and moon in space have swung the moon farther to the north of the earth’s equator than usual, while the moon has also been relatively nearer the earth.

The tides ebb and flow in endless surges, due to the lifting power of the moon acting on the millions of miles of the ocean’s great surface. The tidal influence is such that in a lake 200 miles across the tide will rise half an inch on the edge nearest to the moon.

It is claimed that muslins dried by the gentler and polarized light of the moon can be preserved white as snow, but if dried in the brighter, hotter light of the sun they would in time turn yellow.

' In its orbit the moon travels at an average rate of 2,287 miles an hour. Its path is calculated for. the nautical almanacs years ahead. It speeds up and slows down every month as it swings around our earth, and then it does some other things which the astronomers cannot just account for and which they are trying to explain. The moon is slightly out of its predicted course, and is also twelve miles ahead of its calculated position in that course.

The fact that the moon does not perfectly follow the path calculated for it has been known for forty or fifty years. In the first few years of this period the moon gained only half a mile, when the speeding up became accelerated. Astronomers say that some unknown forces, possibly magnetic, are tugging the moon forward and pulling it out of its path.

The Planets in Order

Having’ considered at some length the moon that we know most about, it, is now in order to consider a type of heavenly body in which we humans happen to have a special interest at just this time. We live on a planet, and we should consider the planets next, once called "wandering stars”.

The only planets we know anything about are those of our own solar system. If there are planets around the stars of other solar systems, and astronomers have certain theories which make that seem probable, no telescope that man can make will ever bring them within view7.

Tim vlamns are opaque and are visible to us only by reflecting the light of the sun. When in opposite direction from, the sun the planets are best observed, because they are then nearest the

earth, and their visible hemisphere is fully illuminated. ■ : :

Our solar system seems to be divided into two general parts: the four planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, which lie nearest the sun; and the five planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, which are more remote.

The innermost planet of the solar system is Mercury, 35,000,000 miles from the sun, with a solar year of eighty-eight days. Mercury appears in form much like the moon, but its diameter is 3,000 miles as against 2,000 for our moon. Mercury has no moon of its own.

The planet is so near the sun, and hence glitters so brightly, that it is difficult for observers to distinguish any of its dominant features. It is known, however, that Mercury is the densest of the planets, and that it has a very dense atmosphere with water in it.

Mercury is named after The god of trade, the messenger of the other heathen deities’. It is believed to turn on its axis in the same time that it revolves around the sun, so that the same side is always turned to the sun. If this is true the temperature of that side is far above the boiling point (hot enough to melt lead), while the other side is plunged in eternal night at a temperature of 200 to 300 degrees below freezing.

Venns the Second Planet ■

The second planet away from the sun is Venus, 66,000,000 miles away, almost exactly the same size as the earth. It completes its circuit about the sun in 224 days and is so brilliant that it may sometimes be seen in midday. Venus has no moon of its own. Its surface is always swathedin clouds. It is brighter than Jupiter, although Jupiter is vastly larger and gives out some light of its own besides reflected sunlight.

Venus is named after the 'goddess of beauty and love’. She has an atmosphere probably about twice the density of our ovm, and the prevailing temperatures would be tropical but for the screen of clouds always interposed between it and the sun. There is no reason to suppose that the composition of Venus differs from that of the earth, and so far as we know, plant and animal life as we know it may well exist [••ere.

The light and heat which. Venus receives' froitt7’ the sun are 1.91 times as great as the earth' receives on an equal surface. The cloud of watery vaporf like the cloud suspended above the earth pribh«tblOab?s7'day, is formed at a height far ’ exceeding the highest cloud levels on the earth. This cloudy envelope prevents any view of the actual surface.

It will be very apparent to readers of Judge Rutherford’s book Creation that the present condition of Venus is about what the earth was prior to the Flood, and it is significant that some astronomers have advanced the idea that animals like the dinosaurs that once roamed this planet are now finding Venus a happy place in which to live.

Our Own Planet, the Earth

The third planet away from the sun is the one upon which we were born. The object of its creation is told us. “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it [it is a permanent feature of the heavens], he created it not in vain [not to be destroyed, as some vainly suppose], he formed it to be inhabited.”—Isa. 45:18.

Those who imagine that our earth is some day to be burned up with literal fire should take a trip across the ocean. It would amply convince them that if by accident the fire got started the Almighty has plenty of water at hand with which to put out the flames. Four-fifths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, the average depth of which is two miles. That is a lot of water. “Seeing is believing.”

The land surface averages less than half a mile in height above the sea level. The deepest water is in the Pacific Ocean, in the Mindanao Deep, north of the Philippines, where it has been measured to a depth of 35,410 feet. The highest mountain peaks are :In Asia,MountEverest, with an altitude of 29,002 feet; in Europe, Mount Elbrus, 18,526 feet; in Africa, Kilimanjaro, 19,720 feet; in South America, Aconcagua, 22,868 feet; in North America, McKinley, 20,300 feet.

The earth is a good place for man: no better place could be devised. It is a vast storehouse of good things for his development, entertainment, comfort and luxury; and in another century or so it will begin to show itself everywhere as the paradise which it is ultimately to become. Forty percent of its peoples at present are of Caucasian origin, forty percent Mongolian, twelve percent Negro, and the remainder are Malays and North American Indians.

The average velocity of the earth in its orbit is eighteen and one-half miles a second. It moves more slowly in July than in January. It makes a complete rotation on its axis in 23 hours and 56 minutes; but because it is moving around the sun in the same direction as it rotates upon its axis the length of the solar day is about four minutes more than the length of rotation

The difference in centrifugal force at the equator and at the poles is such that a man who would wreigh 200 pounds at the equator wmuld wTeigh 201 pounds if weighed on the same scales at the poles. The aurora borealis is- a phenomenon of earth’s atmosphere’. With, a height averaging sixty miles, and few rays ever exceeding one hundred miles in height, it shows the limits of our atmosphere.

Men have traveled on the surface of the earth, through it in tunnels, and bored down into it in mines; they have traveled on the water in boats, through the water in submarines, and under water in tubes. They are now flying through the atmosphere, and have even proposed to send a rocket to the moon. Man is certainly making himself at home in the home in which he finds himself.

The earth is the nearest to the sun of any planet provided with a moon, and it is the only one whose temperature seems entirely suited to life of the kind we know. The earth is nearest the sun in early January. From that time on it recedes about 17,000 miles a day. During the summer the sun is more nearly overhead, so its rays are more concentrated; and it is this concentration that produces heat.

At present, so the astronomers tell us, the earth is running ahead of its schedule a fraction of a second a day, and hence is not quite so reliable as a timepiece as it was wont to be. But don’t let this make any difference in your confidence in your alarm clock.

The first photograph actually showing the curvature of the earth was recently exhibited in Cleveland. This photograph, taken in South America, of mountains 320 miles from the camera shows the mountain range in a straight horizontal line, but one section where there were no mountains was shown bending slightly downward at one end, resembling the photographs of the curving edge of the moon.

Eros and the Asteroids

Most well-informed people, if asked how many planets there are in our solar system, would answer glibly, ‘Nine: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Piute.’ Very good, as far as it goes;

But the right answer would be that instead of nine planets in our solar system the best estimates are that there are 80,000, ranging from Jupiter, 87,000 miles in diameter, down to rocks 10 miles in diameter, all flying about the sun with as much dignity as Jupiter himself.

These minor planets, of which Ceres, 485 miles in diameter, is the largest, and Eros, 15 miles in diameter, the most important, are located principally in a belt between Mars and Jupiter and make their journey around the sun in an average revolution of four and one-half years. Eros is located between Earth and Mars.

Eros was discovered by Witt, of Berlin, August 13,1898. It is the most valuable and useful of the family of 1,100 asteriods because it comes nearer to the earth than any other heavenly body except the moon. Until May, 1931, it is out here only a little matter of 16,700,000 miles. Traveling toward it at the rate of 100 miles an hour it would take us only 19 years 23 days 8 hours to make a landing; and that is very, very close, astronomically speaking.

Owing to the fact that Eros comes so close to the earth, it is pulled out of its elliptic path by the earth’s attraction. By carefully measuring the amount of this deviation astronomers can compute the weight of the earth more accurately than it can be estimated by other methods.

When the first four asteroids were discovered, 'January 1, 1801, the hypothesis was advanced that they were parts of an exploded planet. This view is no longer held. They are now considered as the pygmies of the solar system, the Weepings’, one might say, ‘left over after the planets had been formed.’ One of the asteriods, discovered in March, 1920, bears the name of President Hoover.

Our Neighbors the Martians

The first planet whose orbit is exterior to that of the earth is Mars, a mean of 141,500,000 miles from the sun, but at times approaching as near as 33,000,000 miles to the earth. It takes Mars 687 days to make his circuit of the sun. He has two moons, Deimos, ten miles in diameter, and Phobos, thirty-six miles in diameter, the inner one ot‘ which, Phobos, travels around the planet in seven hours and thirty-nine minutes, or about three times a day, while Deimos makes the circuit in thirty hours eighteen, minutes. One of these moons rises in the east and the other in the west.

We know more about Mars than we can ever know' of the other planets. We are able to see all sides of it and to study and map both poles, v’hile some parts of the earth no human eye has ever seen. The diameter of Mars is about 4,200 miles. Mars is named after the heathen ‘god of war’.

A day on Mars is only a little longer than one on earth, but the Martian year is about twenty-three of our months, or nearly equal to two of our years. Its surface gravity is only about one-third of that of our planet. Spring, summer, autumn and winter succeed one another as with us, but the seasons are each twice as long.

Like the earth, Mars has water and an atmosphere; but unlike the earth, moon, and other planets, its surface is very smooth. Observations indicate that there are times when the surface of Mars is swept by winds which attain a velocity of 230 miles an hour. The temperature is chilly. The orbit of Mars is the most eccentric of the solar system, the greatest distance of the planet from the sun exceeding its least distance by 26,400,000 miles.

Mars is not exactly circular in form, being gibbous to the extent of one-eighth of its diameter. There are white spots at the poles of rotation, supposed to consist of snow; and when summer time comes in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the white spot about that pole dwindles considerably in extent, and in some of its summer seasons it disappears entirely. The periodical recession and advance of the Martian ice cap v,Tas accurately photographed many years ago.

The air of Mars contains less than one-third less oxygen than is found at the top of Mount Everest. The temperature at the equator is about sixty degrees above zero at noon, and around ninety degrees below zero at night. Somebody suggests that if there are any Martians they would have to have enormous lungs and should have coats of fur, detachable at ’will, to meet these changes in temperature.

Besides the polar ice caps the remaining areas of Mars are of two sorts, grayish and ruddy. The grayish areas were once supposed to be seas, but are now regarded as marshes covered with some sort of vegetation. These areas change their color and intensity with the seasons, very much as our vegetation would appear to do if viewed from a celestial neighbor.

And then there are ruddy areas, large in extent, so large as to give the planet a very reddish color, suggesting blood. These reddish areas are thought to be great sand plains. Across them are certain fine, dark, straight markings, first discerned in 1666, and supposed by some to be canals. If they are canals the digging of them by human, creatures would not be very difficult, as the density of Mars is not very great. Modern astronomers lean away from the thought that these are canals, and some even deny their existence. '

The King of the Planets

The king of the planets, Jupiter, named after the chiefest of the heathen deities, is a planetary system in himself. He has four principal moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, which revolve about him in periods of two to seventeen days; and five secondary moons, unnamed, two of which are fifteen million miles away from him and get around him only about once in two years.

The four first named were discovered by Galileo, in 1610, and are sometimes referred to as Galilean stars. They are very large objects, their diameters ranging from 2,100 to 3,550 miles. The largest of them thus exceeds Mercury and approaches closely to Mars in size.

Jupiter is the largest planet of the solar system. Its mean diameter is about 86,500 miles; its mean distance from the sun, 483,300,000 miles. The inclination of its axis is 3° 5' 30", so that changes in the seasons must be almost unknown. It spins at the rate of 28,000 miles an hour. If the earth traveled at that rate our day would be less than an hour long.

A Jovian year is about the length of twelve of our years; for it takes Jupiter 11 years and 314 days of our time to make its circuit of the sun. Its path is that of a vast ellipse, with the sun just off the center of the circle.

The disk of Jupiter is crossed in a direction parallel to the equator by three or four vividly marked bands or belts. Others of these belts vary in density and distinctness. They are assumed to be some sort of vapor of considerable density, perhaps helium.

South of the equator there is a great red spot which has been visible for about ninety years. In the year 191.9 this great red spot and its immediate surroundings underwent some surprising changes. The bay or hollow in which it was

Ckooki.tn, K.

located disappeared, and the spot itself was almost obliterated. Two years later the spot reappeared, was well defined and of abnormal length, but had lost its color. Perhaps the phenomenon maybe explained as a gigantic volcanic eruption.

Jupiter is only one-fourth as dense as the earth. It bulges greatly at the equator, due to its rapid revolution upon its axis. At the equator this is reckoned as more than five minutes faster in each ten-hour revolution than it is in the temperate zones.

Saturn’s Rings and Moons

It is a long jump from Mars to Jupiter, but it is almost as far from Jupiter to the next planet, Saturn, as it would be all the way back from Jupitei’ to the sun. Saturn is 870,000,000 from the sun. It takes it 29 years and 167 days to make its circuit about the sun. Saturn is 70,000 miles in diameter, is very hot, and is so light that it could float in water. It is named after the heathen 'god of agriculture’......

Saturn has encircling it three bright rings and an inner dusky ring through which the body ofc the planet can be seen. The rings render Saturn a beautiful and striking telescopic object. They are about 173,000 miles in external diameter. The central opening of the ring is about 1.11,000 miles. This makes the breadth of the ring itself, from its inner to its outer circumference, about 31,000 miles, or more than four times the diameter of the earth.

Although Saturn is not quite so large as Jupiter, its grand array of rings and satellites renders it the most stupendous object in the solar system., outside of the sun itself. To the naked eye, when near opposition, it shines as a bright star of the first magnitude. Its light is somewhat yellow, bearing a great resemblance to that of Arcturus, both in color and in brightness. It is supposed to rotate at a speed of about 10,000 miles an hour.

The present condition of Saturn illustrates the method used in the creation of the earth. One after another the rings surrounding the earth have come down, the last of which came down in Noah’s day in the form of a flood of waters.

Saturn has ten moons, situated outside" tile rings: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Themis, Hyperion, Iapetus and Photbe. Iapetus is about the same size as our moon, while Titan is one and one-half times as large.

Saturn thus has more satellites than surround any other planet.

Uranus and Neptune

The planet Uranus is 1,782,800,000 miles from the sun, a little more than twice as far from that body as its nearer neighbor Saturn. It is 31,000 miles in diameter and travels about the sun in 84 years and 7 days. It has four moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. It was discovered in 1781 by the astronomer Herschel. The planet is barely visible to the naked eye. It probably rotates about 10,000 miles an hour. Uranus is the name of a heathen deity supposed to personify heaven itself.

The discovery of Neptune in 1846 was one of the most marvelous ever made by man. The discovery of no other planet has ever so surprised the scientific world as did the accidental finding of Uranus by Herschel. Neptune was captured in a mathematician’s net.

A young Frenchman named Leverrier found that Uranus was moving in its orbit in . a way that indicated the disturbing influence of a planet still farther from the sun. His calculation showed him just where the new planet ought to be, and there it was found when a telescope was directed to the spot.

Neptune is 2,795,998,000 miles from the sun. It has one moon, unnamed. Like Uranus it is supposed to rotate about 10,000 miles an hour on its axis. It is inclined 43 degrees on its axis. Neptune is named after the heathen "god of the sea.’

It is about 36,000 miles in diameter. Its year is equal to 164 years and 280 days of our time. It requires four hours for the light of the sun to reach the surface of Neptune. The nearest -fixed star is many thousands of times farther distant.

The New Planet, Pluto

In history 1930 will stand out as the year of the discovery of the new planet, Pluto, named after the heathen ’god of darkness’. The star was found at Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, in January last, after having been predicted fifteen years ago by Percival Lowell. Like Neptune, it was a mathematical discovery.

After Pluto had been located an examination of photographic plates made at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1919 revealed the location again and confirmed the discovery. An Italian, Ben-dandi, claims the discovery of three other new planets by similar methods.

Pluto is of about the size of Mars, and is yellowish in color, very different from the blue planets Uranus and Neptune. Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of Harvard College Observatory, has calculated that it requires Pluto 251 years to complete its orbit around the sun. This is nearly a century longer than for Neptune.

A Word About Eclipses

A lunar eclipse is caused by the revolution of the moon about the earth placing it, at calculable intervals, on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, so that the earth’s shadow falls on the moon. As the moon is visible on earth only by reason of reflected light from the sun, the earth’s shadow falls on the moon and it becomes, at these periods, partly or totally invisible. There cannot be more than three eclipses of the moon in one year, and in some years it is possible for the moon to miss the earth’s shadow.

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