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Show Death by Rusting May Be Eventual Fate of Earth Minerals May Absorb All the Oxygen DEATH by rusting rather than by freezing when the sun goes out, or in the apocalyptic fires of a Judgment day, may possibly be the eventual event-ual fate of the earth. This suggestion sug-gestion is made by Prof. Henry Hen-ry Norris Russell, Princeton university astronomer, writing in the new annual report of the Smithsonian institution. Oxygen, as everybody now knows, is the real essence of the breath of life. If it were to be wholly removed re-moved from the atmosphere of this planet, we should all perish mouse and man, toadstool and tree. Some rocks contain oxygen, locked up in chemical combination. Sometimes this combination can be cracked, as by volcanic action. Then the oxygen is turned loose, largely as carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is still unbreathe-able, unbreathe-able, but it is eagerly seized upon by plants, which extract the carbon for food manufacture, and return half of the oxygen free. Thus the atmosphere is replenished. May Absorb All Oxygen. But there are other rocks, very abundant, too, containing iron in the partly oxidized "ferrous" form. This ferrous oxide is thirsty for more oxygen, to complete its transformation trans-formation into the "ferric" form. Ferric oxide is most familiar to us as common iron must, but it is also responsible for most of the common red rocks and soild. Professor Russell suggests that eventually the ferrous minerals will absorb all the oxygen in the air, or yet to be released into the air, locking it all up in ferric minerals. The earth will then be without the oxygen-breathing life as we know it. This stage may perhaps already exist on Mars, the rust-red planet But it is not due to arrive here tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps in a billion years, says Professor Russell. Many Have Watched Skies. Reports from many watchers of the skies, whether of remote nebulae neb-ulae and stars, or of the nearer planets and satellites, or of the doings of the earth's own intimate envelope of gases which we call the atmosphere, are found in the new Smithsonian report. Possibilities of long-range weather forecasting are dicussed by the Smithsonian institution's secretary. Dr. Charles G. Abbot and by a British "guest writer," Sir Gilbert T. Walker. Doctor Abbot's approach ' to earth's weather is through the sun's radiation, a subject he had studied for many years. Sir Gilbert sticks to earth, finding correlations between weather today in one part of the earth and the weather some months hence in another place. |