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Show Precision of Gravitation Allows Man to Live Here Precariously, Writer Says Has the thought occurred to you that there might be a time when summer never will come again? We are accustomed to think of our ordinary seasonal variations in temperature as being of considerable consider-able magnitude. To us 100 degrees Fahrenheit is unbearably hot; 30 degrees below zero insufferably cold. When either of these temperatures temper-atures is reached, according to Donald Don-ald B. Harris, in the Coronet, we feel that nature must be exerting herself strenuously, in order to make us uncomfortable. In order to get even a faint idea of how critical our temperature adjustment adjust-ment is, we must imagine a very large heat regulator with a dial 14 inches long. One end of this dial is 454 degrees below zero, 1.800.000 degrees de-grees above zero the other. Then the normal terrestrial range of temperature is represented by a line on the dial, narrower than the thickness of the thinnest piece of j paper. If we are to maintain tern- j peraiures on eartii as they are today, to-day, the pcinter must be set sqare- ly in the center of this line; if it is moved to one side or the other by even so much as the thickness of a hair, average temperatures on earth will either drop far below freezing, or rise above the boiling point of water. It is literally true that all life on earth is "hanging by a thread," the thread of gravitation which links us to the sun, and holds the earth within the beneficent sphere of its radiation. If this thread should break, or if it should stretch ever so slightly, or contract, even by the smallest amount, temperature conditions con-ditions would so change on eirth that we would all immediately freeze to death, or perish in a horror of suffocation and flame. |