A PEAR-SHAPED EARTH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8937, 1 October 1907, Page 4

A PEAR-SHAPED EARTH.

In the mathematical and physical science series of the British Association Professor Love gave a most interesting address on the figure of the earth. He endeavoured to prove that the earth ishiot an absolute sphere, with its surface everywhere the same distance from the centre, but tiiat', owingTto a shifting centre of gravity through the ages and the difference of the oscillations in different parts of the world, there Were, popularly speaking, “ups and downs” deforming the sphere into a sort of irregular pear-shaped surface. The stalk of the pear was in the southern part of Australia, and it contained Australasia and the Antarctic Continent. This was surrounded on all sides but one —towards South America—by a zone of depression, the waist of the pear. This again was surrounded of all sides but one—towards Japan—by a zone of elevation which might be called the protuberance of the pear. This comparison, however, must not bo taken too literally, as it referred to the irregularity of the earth’s surface, and not to the spherical shape. Professor l ove declared that the earth had altered in shape“throughout the ages. At one time the moon was mhcli nearer to the earth than now, and the two bodies once rotated about their common cen’re of gravity, almost as a single rigid system. The moon was nearly fixed in the sky. The earth must then have been drawn out _ towards the moon, so that its surface was more nearly an ellipsoid, with three unequal axes, than it is now.