IF THE SUN FAILED.

Shannon News, 19 February 1924, Page 4

IF THE SUN FAILED.

Wonderful things’ are. constantly hap-, polling in the universe; but what if the sun were suddenly, extinguished? The earth and every Giving : miiigf upon it Avould be doomed in a very short time. Why, at the end of the first Aveek the frost Avould have destroyed all but the hardest of the vegetation. Our lakes and rivers would freeze solid. Even our, oceans would-be soon turned to ice. And the ico, by its greater bulk compared with AA'ater, would . encroach upon" and overwhelm the land, until only the tops of the highest mountains Avould show above' the glacial sea. These mountain summits would themselves be covered with deep snow, or ice crystals, Avhich had fallen because of the Avater vapour in tjie atmo ( fpihere' haying, frozen. Mankind would be destroyed to the uttermost fends of the glob'e. Neither \vo|uld the very lowest forms of .organised, creatures escape the icy death, doiyn upon our 'derelict earth, for it would.be on'e long night. : No brightshining moon would ever rise, for our satellite .borrows its splendour from the sun.

" The earth .would not stop turning round on its axis, nor Avould it cease to revolve about the dead sun. There arc b'elieved to be many dead suns in the . uniyerse, all travelling through space at a great speed. Would our dead sun be;doomed to an eternal night? Perhaps not. Perhaps, in the course of jits wanderings—at a speed of about twelve miles a second —it might meet Avith another celestial derelict.

If so, then appalling Avould be th'e impact. Its light and heat Avould be revived. The sun, in brief, Avould be born again. And what of that icy tomb, the earth? It would melt as a flake of snow in the fire.