Show ASTRONOMY STILL AT FAULT men of science forced to admit exact Re results prom from their calculations are not possible the celebrated observatory at greenwich the place from which we reckon longitude was founded by charles I 1 n in 1075 1675 mainly for the purpose of investigating vesti gating the movements of the moon in the interests of navigation although in the intervening two and a half centuries astronomers have hare worked at the problem the moon has not yet become entirely amenable to their mathematics 1 in a recent report of the observatory at greenwich attention loa Is invited to the increasing deviation between the calculated position of the moon in the sky and its real position shown by tho greenwich observations the deviation has haj lately been growing in a serious manner the error last year was more than twelve as aa large as uie the error twenty years ago and the average annual increase during in the two decades has hag amounted to half a second of are arc in longitude the reason that astronomers bave have failed in getting exact results from calculations bawd on the dynamical laws of gravitation Is possibly the existe existence neg of some attractive force that they have not yet discovered although the file result may also be affected by tho the true shape of the earth which still awaits accurate determination |