Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1881 — Latest From the Moon. [ARTICLE]

Latest From the Moon.

. Professor Proctor’s last lecture before sailing for Europe was upon the moon, and it was very interesting. The moon does not revolve around the earth, he said, but the two circle about each other, and the real centre of the revolution of each is the sun. If there were a railway sufficiently , “elevated” to reach the moon, which is 238,818 miles distant from us, we should be fifteen months making the journey at ordinary railroad speed. Upon arriving, we should observe several interesting phenomena. First it is a very respectable luminary of a diameter of 2,081 miles, with a surface of 14,000,000 square miles, avolume one forty-ninth of that of the earth, and a mass one-eighty-first of it. Then, the force of gravity being onesixth that of tbe earth, we could be thjrty-slx feet high, ana still quite as active as we are here. But our longer bodies would have a longer day in which to disport themselves, for there is a lapse of 29X of our days between I the lunar sunrise and sunset. Our extremities, however, would certainly suffer after sunset, for the surface of the moon is 250 degrees below zero at I midnight, and the reaction toward I noon would try even our prolonged proportions, for at noon the surface would be 88 degrees above the boiling point. We should be very lonely, probably, for there is no living creature there now.

Still, as Professor Proctor had said that all the planets pass through five stages, the last of which is death—a stage which tbe moon has reached—the apprehensive mind naturally inquires now soon the earth will probably reach it. The professor answers, reassuringly, that the earth is now about 500,000,000 years old, and that it took tbe moon 800,000,000 to reach its present state. He therefore concludes that it will take the earth 500,000,000 years more to reach the same condition. There is thus no immediate cause for apprehension.—Harper’s Weekly.