FAIR LUNA'S UNDERSTUDIES.

Shannon News, 31 December 1923, Page 3

FAIR LUNA'S UNDERSTUDIES.

NEW DISCOVERT, BASED ON . MATHEMATICS. '

My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night; Four fixed, and the fifith did whirl

about. The other four in wondrous motion. .. The news from America that a well-known astronomer asserts the existence of a second moon, revolving round the earth; taken in conjunction with the reported discovery of other moons in recent years, recalls the above utterance of Hubert to King John.

Like Dean Swift, who, in "Gulliver's Travels," announced the discovery of two moons revolving around Mars. Hubert was romancing, but Swift's two moons were actually in existence, though they were not discovered until more than a century after his death, and it looks as though the retinuo of credited the earth will one day be unmasked.

About 20 years ago a German astronomer claimed to have demonstrated by irreproachable mathematics the existence of a second moon attendant on the earth, three times more distant and 1-SOth as big as the one we all know.

Certain erratic movements of the old moon have puzzled astronomers for centuries, but the German mathematician asserted that this second moon was the source of disturbance, arid fully accounted for the apparent failure of Newton's laws.

A few years later Professor Stone Wiggins, a Canadian, produced a third moon to account for a particularly cold snap. At times, he said, this moon came exceptionally near the earth, and its temporary proximity induced atmospheric phenomena favourable to a severe winter.

Judging . from the details available of the newest moon discovered in America, it is quite distinct from the other two, and adds .a fourth moon to the earth's satellites. Unfortunately all these new moons seem to be so small that at present, at any rate, it is quite impossible to obtain optical evidence of their existence, even in the biggest telescopes. They, all.depend on abstruse mathematical calculations, and few astronomers admit tho validity of the data on which they are based.

v ßut,- after all, why should not the earth have several moons? Saturn has 10 (not including the billions of babymoons that form the rings), Jupiter nine, and even Mars, less than one-sixth the size of the earth, boasts a couple.

All the same, it seems a little useless to attacli moons to a planet which cannot be seen by its inhabitants, and which might conceivably collide one day and come to earth with a crash. What is badly wanted is a reserve of moons that would take the place of Fair Luna when once every month she basks in the sun. We might then have perpetual moonshine from a full moon—clouds permitting'.