Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjectsProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjects
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Dr. Klein, a German astronomer, has recently called the attention of
astronomers to a lunar crater some three miles wide, which had not
before been observed, and which, he feels sure, was not in existence
two years ago. Astronomers have long since given up all hope of tracing
either the signs of actual life upon the moon or traces of the past
existence of living creatures there. But there are still among them
those who believe that by sedulous and careful scrutiny processes of
material change may be recognised in that seemingly inert mass. In
reality, perhaps, the wonder rather is that signs of change should
not be often recognised, than that from time to time a new crater
should appear or the walls of old craters fall in. The moon's surface
is exposed to variations of temperature compared with which those
affecting the surface of our earth are altogether trifling. It is
true there is no summer or winter in the moon. Sir W. Herschel has
spoken of the lunar seasons as though they resembled our own, but
in reality they are very different. The sun's midday height at any
lunar station is only about three degrees greater in summer than in
winter; whereas our summer sun is 47° higher in the sky at noon than
our winter sun. In fact, a midsummer's day on the moon does not differ
more from a midwinter's day, as far as the sun's actual path on the
sky is concerned, than with us the 17th of March differs from the
25th, or the 19th of September from the 27th. It is the change from
day to night which chiefly affects the moon's surface. In the lunar
year of seasons, lasting 346-2/3 of our days, there are only 11-3/4
lunar days, each lasting 29-3/4 of ours. Thus day lasts more than a
fortnight, and is followed by a night of equal length. Nor is this
all. There is neither air nor moisture to produce such effects as are
produced by our air and the moisture it contains in mitigating the heat
of day and the cold of night. Under the sun's rays the moon's surface
becomes hotter and hotter as the long lunar day proceeds, until at
last its heat exceeds that of boiling water. But so soon as the sun
has set the heat thus received is rapidly radiated away into space (no
screen of moisture-laden air checking its escape), and long before
lunar midnight a cold exists compared with which the bitterest weather
ever experienced by Arctic voyagers would be oppressively hot. These
are not merely theoretical conclusions, though even as such they could
be thoroughly relied upon. The moon's heat has been measured by the
present Lord Rosse (using his father's splendid six-feet mirror). He
separated the heat which the moon simply reflects to us from that which
her heated surface itself gives out (or, technically, he separated
the reflected from the radiated heat), by using a glass screen which
allowed the former heat to pass while it intercepted the latter. He
thus found that about six-sevenths of the heat we receive from the moon
is due to the heating of her own substance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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