THE EARTH’S FUTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1271, 14 July 1914, Page 4

THE EARTH’S FUTURE.

2,000,000 YEARS TO LIVE

A well-known French malhe ni<.uieir.n, M. Verronet, recently made a most interesting communication to the French Academy of S'-iences, iu which lv' states that tue earth has only another 2,000.000 of years to live. At abon! that time lib of all descriptions ou the globe will, says M. Verronet, have ceased, owing to the intense cold brought about by the reduction of the power of the sun’s rays.

The idea, of course, that life on the earth will cease as the result of the gradual cooling of the sun, is no new one, but it is the first time that a savant has given the earth such a short period : •••■■-..re life as 2,ooO;000 years. M. Verruiiet supposes, according to the theory of IT--1 Miltolz. that the sun is con-

trading and cooling, and is constantly losing his heat energy. The present solar temperature is calculated to be about n.igcdeg. fabr,, and, by making certain hypothesis on the condensation of the sun, M. Verronet finds, mathematically, that the mean temperature of the earth’s surface is about 52deg. fahr., with gedegs. at the equator. And these figures resulting from calculations based on the sun correspoud very nearly to actuality.

Working backwards from this, M. Verronet calculates that 2,000,000 years ago the range of the sun’s rays was one and a-half times as powerful as it is now, and the quantity of heat shed on the earth was proportionately greater. In the neighbourhood of the poles, at Sodeg. latitude, the temperature of the surface of the earth must have been somewhere about igqdegs. fahr. Life, then, did not appear on the earth, according to M. Verronet, until after this time, and then began at the poles, the coolest parts of the globe. Similarly, M, Verronet calculates that in 2,000,000 years from now the quantity of heat shed on the earth will be so diminished that our planet will be completely frozen over, the mean temperature at the surface being about zero. Life will then be impossible on the earth. It will mean the death ot everything—preceded, in his opinion, by a term during which man will have returned to barbarism. According to his calculations, then, the total duration of lite on the earth is 4,000,000 years, and at the present moment we are at about the middle point of the curve which represents this terrestrial life. As far as Mars is concerned, he says further, calculations show that it has been frozen for a long time, and that there is no longer any life on its surface.