Show Will This IWy L b Q thQ faf Q i 0e > > Earth I The Famous French PriestAstronomer Abbe Moreux Says That the Earth Which Once Blazed Like the Sun Is Slowly Contracting and Losing Its Shape That It Is Doomed to Co Through Terrific Convulsions and That Much of the r Present Land Surface Will Sink Into the Sea 0 Before the Sea Itself Dries Up HEN violent shocks like those that have G W felt in tho last few weeks come to 1 menace some point on our planet ruining ruin-ing cities and spreading desolation over extensive districts our uneasy minds interrogate science and demand of it the solution of a problem that has been mooted for many centuries Let a violent earthquake be felt and 1m mediately powers and states In a burst of spontaneous Instinctive brotherhood feel as It were the necessity for coming com-Ing closer to each other dissensions will give place to anxiety over the common peril and we all worry about this life of ours that Is periodically v threatened by the Instability of that element which we dignify with the pretentious name of terra firma Slncd December 28 geologists and astronomers have submitted tomany I ah interview The explanations given by tho former have often seemed in 0 J sufficient while the latter have gen i r 1 orally avoided the subject It may seem presumption on the part of an astronomer to go to work In territory reserved for geologists but to what science should we have recourse for the story of the earths past Has not the astronomer always before his eyes thousands of suns at all periods of their life Does he not know that after having shone for a second on the clock of time our sun itself will become be-come extinct and will roll on through space like the dead suns of the Milky Way Better than geology then astronomy as-tronomy Is the science which projects t the light of present times upon the mysteries of the past Millions of years ago our humble little earth shone with its own light a blazing star it also warmed its satellite just as the sun today dispenses dis-penses to us its light and its heat but in its dizzy course around the sun In Its Intersldereal voyage among the constellations of heaven like the sun 4 It never repasses the same place and Its original heat has quickly been dissipated dis-sipated by contact with the cold of space which modem science estimates r at 273 degrees Centrlgrade below zero Birth of Life on Earth Little by little it became enveloped in a thick mantle of clouds just like Jupiter at the present time Then came the final moment Upon Its surface with my friend Col du Ligondes have succeeded In accomplishing In these last few years In 1902 I Indicated Just what might be drawn from the sketch made by Green to explain the theory of volcanoes and earthquakes A few lines will suffice to make the reader understand the hypothesis The earth Is round Of that there leo le-o doubt Its rotary movement bas swollen It at the equator and flattened it at the poles Such Is the general formula which has now become classic clas-sic But its volume diminishing from the effects of cooling the earth has reached the condition of a balloon from which the gas is escaping little by little It Is tending toward the shape of a pyramid with four faces and four apexes The Terrestrial Globe Examine a terrestrial globe Three of the faces arc represented by depressions de-pressions the hollow of the Pacific the Atlantic ocean and the Indian ocean To these depths correspond over the sixtieth parallel north three of the apexes of our pyramid which became prominent very early as the vast layers of primeval rocks bear witness wit-ness These are the Canadian height that of the Baltic and that of Siberia the center of which Is found not far from Irkutsk From these three npexes radiate like continental backbones brunches which with more or less Interruption In-terruption continue to the South Polo Since the voyage of Nansen we have known that the fourth face of the pyramid can be placed In thp great Arctic basin while the Antarctic continent con-tinent forms the fourth apex of our pyramid It Is around these Bridges and these apexes which have remained stable throughout the great geological periods peri-ods and have formed so to speak the skeleton of the dry land that what may be called the slow revolutions of the globe will continue to take place All the general phenomena of the surface I sur-face of the earth can be explained by I three species of movements i 1 Each face of the pyramid In Its I center follows the core in Its contraption con-traption Thus it is a sinking movement move-ment which has formed the great depressions de-pressions of the oceans 2 At the edges of the faces that Is to say round about the ridges we find lateral compressions of the crust which tend to cause movements from i J 1 m w j 7 I J i u t4 I J RELIEF MAp or EUROPE AS rs there formed a crust which impris onqd within it a core gaseous liquid and at a high temperature The geological geo-logical periods began life appeared In the warm waters while the cold ever at work was Incessantly causing 1 the Internal mass to contract soon the Bhell became too large for the liquid mass Inside and it was then that tho wrinkles appeared in the barkthose ridges which later were to give birth to our ranges of mountains But nothing In nature is made without with-out law It had always been believed that the ups and downs of tho surface sur-face wore formed rather by chance until Lowthlan Green about 40 years ago suggested the general proqess by which the continents were formed writes the Abbe Moreux curator of the observatory at Bruges Belgium In the New York World At first treated with derision Greens theory at last 4 t s came under the high patrouage of M de Lnpparent In France From the point of view of th < r astronomer many 1 points remained to bo cleared up This 1 is the work which I In collaboration j I I 4 below upward There It is that the fractures take place Regions of Earthquakes 3 As the earths crust grows thicker the Inclined planes between tho face and the ridges have a marked tendency ten-dency to dislocation These regions are gradually rejoining tho depths of a sort of slow but constant downward movement There also we expect to find the regions of earthquakes and wo tihall see that experience confirms this view In the course of geological times other very Important wrinkles have been produced hero and there These generally tend to a dlrectlpn perpendicular to the primitive fractures frac-tures As for the parts of the crust which lie In the Inclined planes In the neighborhood neigh-borhood of volcanic regions they will always because of their tendency to slip down among the parts that have already fallen be subject to a tailing movement and will bo specially favored fa-vored In tile way of earthquakes It U thus that my theory has the advantage of explaining the double phenomenon of volcano and earthquake earth-quake by the process of tho contraction contrac-tion of the earth And we shall see how experience absolutely confirms this theory Let us take up the terrestrial globe on which we marked the ridges and the apexes of our pyramid Around these resisting points tho continents have been formed and the lines ot dislocation dis-location will be easy to recognize Volcanoes Vol-canoes old or now ore all grouped around just those points that mark the limits of the broken parts As this Is on Mercatora projection the sphere I spread out into a plane the three I ridges of the pyramid huvo become like the meridians parallel lines Alongside the great American ridge an uninterrupted volcanic line Is seen Around the second are grouped the volcanic districts of Iceland and Jan Muyen the extinct volcanoes of Au vergne In France the volcanic re glons of Sicily and eastern Africa A third line which joins the first byway by-way of the Aleutian Islands surrounds the third ridge and this is made up of ho olcanlc regions of the Kurllo Islands Japan the East Indies and New Zealand Unite at South Pole All these files of fire unite at tho south pole around the fourth apex which Is thq Antarctic continent the borders of which show us also signs of the same kind with the volcanoes Erebus Ere-bus and Terror But this Is not all You may have noticed that the three great ridges of the pyramid tend toward the east This is due to a wellknown law of mechanics me-chanics which provides that every planet which diminishes In volume Increases In-creases its speed of rotation The three great apexes or summits of the northern hemisphere arose very early and as they were further away from the center of the earth than regions further to the south they for this reason dragged behind and so all the t f 1rf a J i o z4 4C r lr l P rN if M t 1 n r 11 h Rezelr9P OFEUcpoFiRc5 P4L CTEDQYMOPEIX southern part of the globe accelerated I Its rotary movement In respect to the I northern part hence a dislocation which caused what geographers call the mediterranean depression that Immense depression which from the Antilles to the Pacific passing byway by-way of the Mediterranean sea the Persian gulf and the East Indies forms one of the zones of least l resistance resis-tance on the crust of the earth There is also found along this one of the most sharply accentuated of volcanic lines As for the earthquakes the area that they cover is as the theory would lend us to expect much vaster in extent In fact they occupy those regions that may be compared to inclined in-clined planes They are to a certain extent independent of the volcanoes and Intimately elated to the steep inclines in-clines of the earths surface This explains the fact that the centers of shaking are In general localized in the marine abysses along the lines of high relief To Be Answered by Time When the crust of the earth shall have become too thick to bond before these periodical oscillations what will become of our globe When the pressure pres-sure upon the internal core shall bo felt perpetually how will those gases behave which are compressed In that llnnienbo reservoir from which we are separated by such an Insignificant crust Terrific convulsions will then menace our miserable planet Ask an astronomer to show you the tormented and shattered face of our satellite the surface of the moon shows us very probably tho desolate aspect of a world In which volcanic action In the spasms of frightful agony has put an end to all planetary life Cataclysms will transform our earth and at that time the volcanoes of the I control plateau will warn mankind that I the stability of the earth Is a vain word Everything passes everything changes nothing Is stable except Ho who created the world and who gives to men when It pleases him such grand and terrible lessons Tho Abbe Moroux In his article goes Into details of what these changes that he describes are likely to do to Europe Eu-rope American readers will find it rfre Interesting to consider what will bo their effect upon North America Applying the abbes reasoning it is possible to make a forecast Physical geographers tell us that the great chains of mountains which stretdi from Canada to South Carolina were thrown up at very early periods though separated by relatively wide intervals The oldest rocks on the continent are those of the Laurentian mountains in Quebec Tho Adlron docks were an Island before the Catskills Cat-skills or the Alleghenies had risen from the water But the line which Father Moreux calls tho American ridge beginning In Hudson bay and extending through tho West Indies and South America to the south pole Is roughly speaking the backbone of tho continent and follows the general line of tho Appalachian chain This part of the country Is declined to rise even higher while the central plateau from the great lakes to the Quit of Mexico forming us It docs one of the areas of least resistance will bo submerged New Yorks Probable Fate And what of Now York The geologists geol-ogists tell us that the city lies on the edge of an enormous fault the Palls Pall-s > the Hudson having been thrown up bj some giant organism of nature i while thy land to the cast of them I dropped tho actual lino of breakage being the bed of the Hudson Any ftu her shock at this point would Intensify In-tensify this life of the Palisades and this drop of the land to the cast of them so the prospect Is that some day the harbor and the Hudson river will rise and engulf the city The Rocky mountains while comparatively com-paratively distinct from the pilnclpal ridge of tho continent are In a sense a duplication of It They were thrown up by a fearful cataclysm which left the depths of the Pacific In the hollow beyond them Many of them are evidently evi-dently volcanoes quiet now so far as I those In the United States are con I coined but still active In Mexico Central Cen-tral America and Alaska A shock of vast extent would lift them even higher high-er and all the prairies would sink Into the gulf between them and the Alle glmnlcs Thus will the union be disrupted by an ocean separating the Pacific states from what Is left of the Atlantic At-lantic states Shall wo live to see it Who can tell These cataclysms come without warning warn-ing but it Is reasurlng to remember that they come at Intervals of tens of thousands of years and that the earth has not yet cooled to a point at which living persons need Ho awake worrying worry-Ing In dread of the giant spasm that will mean the death agony of this old earth of ours |