Show Death by Rusting May Be Eventual Fate of Earth V Minerals May l Absorb All the Oxygen D T vEATH EA TH by rusting rather i- i than by freezing when the sun goes out or in the apocalyptic tic fires of a Judgment day clay may possibly be the eventual fate of the earth This suggestion is made by Prof Henry Norris Russell Russell Rus Rus- sell seII Princeton university astronomer astron astron- omer orner writing in the new annual report of the Smithsonian Oxygen as everybody now knows is the real essence of the breath of life o If it were to be wholly I L reo re re- moved from the 01 or planet we should all perish perish mouse 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 able but it is eagerly seized upon by plants which extract the carbon for food m 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 transformation transformation trans trans- formation into the ferrous form Ferric oxide is most familiar to us as s common iron rust but it is also responsible for most of the common red rocks and soils 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 oxygen life as we know it This stage may perhaps already exist on Mars the rust-red rust planet But it is not due to arrive here tomorrow or th the next day Perhaps in a billion years says Professor V nu seu Many Have Watched Skies Reports from many watchers of the skies whether of remote nebulae nebulae nebulae neb neb- and stars or of the nearer planets and satellites or of the doings of the earths earth's own intimate envelope of gases which we call the atmosphere are found in the new Smithsonian report Possibilities of range long-range weather forecasting are by t the h e Smithsonian institutions institution's secretary Dr Charles G. G Abbot and by a British guest writer Sir Gilbert T. T Walker Waller Doctor Abbots Abbot's approach to e earths earth's weather is through the suns 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 |