A SCIENTIFIC HELL
Science playing the rôle of an up-to-date Persephone, visiting the underworld realm of Pluto to wrest from it hidden cosmic secrets, was described recently at a meeting of the American Geographical Society at the Engineering Building by Prof. Harlow Shapley, Harvard astronomical wizard, who told of the ultra-modern scientific version of Ulysses's descent into Hades or Dante's visit to hell.
Prof. Shapley, to whom 10,000,000 light-years are like a day to any ordinary mortal, and whose astronomical investigations have led him to the center of the cosmos, told the scientists present to descend to the bowels of the earth and construct therein "Plutonic Laboratories," where a man could learn many things unknown about beginnings and endings, and where, incidentally he may find a way of utilising the tremendous heat energy stored up in the "scientific hell."
Under the general theme of the "Third Dimension in Geography," Prof. Shapley talked about the past, present and future of the earth-moon system; how in 50,000,000 years our days and months will be forty-seven times as long as they are now; how after that the moon will again approach the earth until it is broken up by tidal disruption into ring fragments circulating around the earth like the ring around Saturn; and of shooting stars coming from far-away solar systems.
"The temperature under the surface of the earth," said Prof. Shapley, "increases one degree Fahrenheit at every seventy-six feet, about seventy degrees per mile. In some places in California we get the temperature of boiling water at a depth of less than a mile. The center of the earth is roughly 4,000 miles below the surface.
"Because of this intense internal heat of the earth it would probably be impossible to maintain permanent laboratories at greater depths than two miles," said the lecturer, "and, in addition, the installation and maintenance of Plutonic laboratories will be a scientific adventure of great difficulty and expense. Yet, if carried on in connection with the work of existing mines and borings it may mark the coming decade as one of the important epochs in man's attempt to understand the earth.
"These Plutonic laboratories, placed at various depths under the surface, fully equipped with modern scientific apparatus, and maintained indefinitely, will contribute to our knowledge in a dozen important fields of geophysic and astronomy."
What Prof. Shapley pointed to as merely a possible by-product of the proposed scientific "descent into Hades" is the commercial possibility of tapping the earth's internal source of heat. There is 31,000,000 times as much natural heat in the earth than in all the coal resources of the world. He stated that Sir Charles Parsons and John L. Hodgson, both noted British engineers, are already engaged in work on this problem.