Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1896 — Queer Facts About Air. [ARTICLE]

Queer Facts About Air.

The celebrated chemist of the sixteenth century who argued that it would be Impossible for us to live on the earth’s surface if the atmosphere would suddenly increase to twice its present thickness could not have been far wrong after all; that is, if the experiments of Dr. Arnott are to be taken as conclusive. In his observations on atmospheric pressure at the bottoms of the deep mining shafts of Europe, Prof. Arnott has found that the change between the readings of a barometer at the bottom of a four-thousaud-foot shaft and one at the surface is great enough to warrant him in making the statement that air at the bottom of a shaft twenty miles deep would be as dense as water. Figuring on the same ratio he finds that if a hole could be sunk forty miles into the bowels of the earth the density of the air at the bottom would be as great as that of quicksilver.