THE MOON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1938, Page 9

THE MOON

OFF ITS COURSE. The moon has gon off its course. This fact was disclosed by the Astronomer Royal, Dr H. Spencer Jones, in his report presented at the Greenwhich Royal Observatory recently. Its deviation is increasing, too, Dr Jones added, but there is no indication of any sudden change in the rotation of the earth. This is a serious matter for astronomers. Dr Martin Davidson, president of the British Astronomical Association, said to a “Sunday Express’ (London) representative: “The moon is now about six seconds of time out of its predicted position. “This means that observatories throughout the world must alter their calculations, and the Nautical Almanac, in which the moon’s position for every hour of the day is calculated, becomes wrong. “The moon being off its course means that the earth’s time is wrong, because the cause of the moon altering its predicted position is the slowing down of the rotation of the earth. “This may be caused by tidal friction, or a contributory factor might be a land upheaval occurring somewhere like the Siberian plateau, the attraction of the sun or perturbation by planets such as Mars and Venus. “The earth is slowing ■ down by about I,oooth part of a second a century. This means it is losing time of about two hours every 2,000 years. “Eventually the days will become much longer, but this will not be for thousands of years, probably until human life is extinct from the earth. “Darwin’s theory was that 3,000 millions years ago the moon broke away from the earth when it was rotating in about four hours. The moon’s receding from the earth and the tidal frictions slowed down to 24 hours. The moon is now constantly moving further away.”