Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1880 — THE MOON. [ARTICLE]

THE MOON.

Statements Going to Show tliat It la Very Hucli Set in Its Way. [From the Popular Science Monthly.] After getting somewhat accustomed to the greatness and strength of a bar of solid steel sixteen and one-half feet square, imagine one which is one mile square— s,2Bo feet wide and as many thick. If it lay on the ground near the Catakill mountains, its upper surface would their highest summit by more than 1,000 feet. It would be equal to 104,200 such monster bars as the last. Its lifting power would be nearly 240,869,000,000 tons. The mind is utterly unable to grasp such figures. The whole globe contains 1,200,000,000 inhabitants. If each man, woman and child could pull with a force of 100 pounds—a large estimate—to move such a weight would require the united efforts of 2,000 such worlds as this. As I shall have frequent occasion to speak of the load which such a bar could sustain, I shall, for convenience, call it in round numbers 240,000,000,000 tons, neglecting the other figures, because the number is so inconceivably great that taking from it a billion or so of tons will alter the result less than one-half of one per centum. This, bar is to be the unit of measure which I shall for the present employ. If half a dozen persons were asked how large the moon appears, they would give as many different replies : “The size of a cart-wheel;” “twelve inches across ; ” “ the size of a dining plate ; ” “as big as a man’s head,” etc. Probably no one would mention a smaller measure, yet a cherry held at arm’s length more than covers its disk. It is difficult to be believed that so small a body exerts any considerable influence on the earth, which seems so immensely larger. It is easy enough to admit that the earth holds the moon in its orbit; but that to do this, to bend its course into a nearly-circular orbit, requires any great outlay of force, is not so clear. Our credulity would be taxed were we asked to believe that the moon, in its efforts to move in a straight line, would break away, although held by a bar of steel one foot square ; for that means a force able to lift nearly 9,000 tons. An astronomer would grant it, making first a mental calculation to see if he were justified in doing so; but even he would hesitate, and perhaps would deny that it was possible the moon could pull asunder one of these great unit bars one mile square, and equal to more than 27,000,000 bars each one foot square. But we would have no hesitation in saying, “Impossible!” if told that, rather than change its course from a straight line to its present curve, our willful little satellite Would snap like pack thread not one, nor tw r o, nor three of those unit bars, but the united strength of 10,000 —or, in other words, one gigantic bar whose section is 100 miles square. Yet, more than eight such bars, or, more precisely, 87,500 unit bars, would but barely deflect the moon into its present path.