1927 Expert Theory : Moon Made Of Melting Ice – Craters Not Formed By Meteors

3 Responses to 1927 Expert Theory : Moon Made Of Melting Ice – Craters Not Formed By Meteors

1. tckev says:

   May 12, 2013 at 9:57 pm

   Grant feeders of no worth is an old problem, today we just have more of them relentlessly stealing $billions for no real practical worth.

   Reply
2. Olaf Koenders says:

   May 13, 2013 at 3:56 am

   “The whole of the white regions are broken up and disturbed..”

   It’s obvious who’s “disturbed”..

   Reply
3. blade says:

   May 13, 2013 at 11:57 am

   Love this one! Here is the plaintext …

   Cairns Post, Qld. Saturday 5 February 1927

   MOON OF ICE.

   IS IT MELTING ?

   STARTLING THEORY.

   Professor Forbes, an astronomer of authority and imagination, has put forward a startling theory to explain the strange phenomena of the moon.

   Three things (he says) strike the eye in the first look through a telescope as the full moon—the great surfaces, white as snow, the black belt like clean ice, and the streaks like ice cracks. The whole of the white regions are broken up and disturbed and covered with lunar craters.

   . . . The most common features of these craters are the flat floor level with the general surface of the moon, the rings of crags enclosing it, and a hill of cone rising out from the very centre of the floor. In his fascinating book, “The Wonder and Glory of the Stars,” which is written with a vigor and an absence of technicalities that will attract a wide public, he suggests that the moon may be in very fact a ball of snow and ice with a small rocky core (says a writer in an exchange). The theory that the craters have been formed by meteorites “fails entirely.” It does not explain “the white streaks that radiate from Aycho (one of the craters) across the moon,” which “must hold the key of the problem.” But if the moon were of ice and snow everything would be explained.

   Travellers in India who have seen the full moon rising over the snow-clad Himalaya ranges have said that the equality of whiteness left them in doubt for a moment whether the moon were not a part of the snow mountain range.

   Moreover, experiments in the Highlands with snow have shown that “every type of lunar crater can be reproduced” by dropping snow-balls on snow.

   Supposing the moon were composed of water with a small rock core and subjected to such terrific cold as prevails in the lunar atmosphere.

   The whole surface would become covered with a shell of ice. This shell would gradually thicken to a depth of 100 miles or more. Water expands in freezing. 16 inside the shell, a new layer of ice is added by freezing, it expands. This must either burst the shell or compress the remaining water. . . . Finally, the accumulating water pressure becomes insupportable. Then comes the cataclysm. The ice cover gives way at its weakest point. This happened to be where now we have the crater, Tycho.

   Enormous masses of water are shot up thousands of miles to the sky, freezing instantly into objects which vary from the size of a raindrop to the size of a mountain, and then fall back on a surface that is covered with snow from the smaller fragments of this ejected water. Thus the lunar craters may be formed.

   The theory fits the facts. But, if the moon is of snow and ice, may it not melt ? the readers will ask. It may be melting, with no apparent visible result.

   In a rare atmosphere (as on the Himalayas) snow does not melt into water, but evaporates in vapour as camphor does. Then this must be re-deposited on the mountain of the moon, as it is on the snow peaks of the Alps. But the disappearance of any mass could not be detected by our vision unless the mass that was melted had a diameter of many miles.

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