On this Subject Our Planet Is as Secretive as a Woman, and Inquisitive Scientists Can
Do Nothing More Than Guess at It.
The earth is almost as secretive on the subject of its age as is a woman who has passed the thirty mark. Several years ago Richard A. Proctor, the celebrated astronomer, addressed himself to an investigation of the subject, and then wrote as follows:
The age of the earth is placed by some at five hundred millions of years; by others, one hundred million years; and still others, of later time, among them the Duke of Argyll, place it at ten million years. None place it lower than ten millions, knowing what processes have been gone through.
Other planets go through the same process. The reason that other planets differ so much from the earth is that they are in so much earlier or later stages of existence. The earth must become old. Newton surmised that it would lose all its water and become perfectly dry. Since then other scientists have confirmed his opinion.
As the earth keeps cooling, it will become porous, and great cavities will be formed in the interior, which will take in the water. It is estimated that this process is now in progress, so far that the water diminishes at the rate of the thickness of a sheet of paper each year.
At this rate, in six million years the water will have sunk a mile, and in fifteen million the water will have disappeared from the face of the globe.
The nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere are also diminishing all the time. It is in an inappreciable degree, but the time will come when the air will be so thin that no creature we know could breathe it and live; the time will come when the world cannot support life. That will be the period of old age, and then will come death.
AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE LINKS.
Flowers of History, Philosophy, and Mendacity Culled by Caddies to the Muse
Whose Metrical Feet Have Wandered Into the Debatable Territory
That Lies Between Fiction and Fact.