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The Rapid Approach of Our Final End

Professor Smithson of the Smithsonian Institution in a statement handed out to the press has declared that it is now only too evident that the rotation of the globe is distinctly slowing up.

This terrible news was almost immediately corroborated over the cable by the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich and by the Director of the Cavendish Physical Laboratory at Cambridge. Further confirmation followed from the Lick Observatory, from the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Chinese Watch Tower at Peking. It appeared that even the Bolshevik observer at Nijni-Novgorod, although only paid by the piece, had noticed the same thing.

Personally, I shall not easily forget the sudden sense of alarm with which the news filled me. Without being a scientist, I know, as does everybody else, that the globe turns on its axis once in every twenty-four hours. I have even gone so far occasionally as to speak of this as the diurnal motion of the earth. Without this diurnal motion there would be no alternation of day and night. If the world stops turning, then, at any given place, it will be either daytime all the time or always night. Either ourselves or the Hindoos will have to stay in the dark. Personally, I would rather wish it on the Hindoos if it has to be. There are more of them for company.

But this, of course, is not the whole extent of the disaster calmly threatened by the astronomers. If the earth stops turning, there will be no seasons, no tides, no winds, no weather. The pulse of life itself will slacken and stop. The human race—including me as well as the Hindoos—will be overwhelmed in extinction.

Like many other people, when I read that news at breakfast time, I wondered if it was worth while to start off to my day’s work. Why not sit quietly at home, and brace one’s feet against the study table and wait for the shock? If the world had to stop, it would surely be unwise to work all morning and find that the stoppage came in the noon hour.

It was only after reflection that I decided to read the news dispatches a little more carefully so as to get an idea of how long it would be before the end came. The general phrases used—a “distinct slackening,” a “definite loss of momentum,” etc., etc.—sounded pretty ominous. There was no doubt that the astronomers were all agreed about the main fact of the case, namely, that “within a measurable time” the globe will cease to turn. But the next question was to see how long they gave us to exist.

I found on closer examination that the rate of slackening is estimated by comparing the successive sidereal days as measured by a parallax. This is a scheme of which I never should have thought myself, but which looks good. The results obtained from it show that the earth’s motion is slackening by the millionth part of a second every day.

When I read that I felt cheered up. After all, there was quite a little time yet. If it takes us a million days to lose a second, that makes—let me see—a loss of one second in about 3,000 years. I guess we can stand that. After all, what’s a second! It seems that old Tut-ankh-Amen and his court went spinning round a millionth part of a second quicker than I do. All right. Let them buzz! I can jog along after them.

And at that rate the final end of the globe, when the Hindoos freeze in the dark and I frizzle in the sun, is still quite a long way off. If it takes 3,000 years to lose one second of our 24-hour spin, it will take 180,000 years to lose a minute of it, and 10,800,000 years to lose an hour of it, and we won’t lose it all till twenty-four times as long as that; in other words, the end will be due in Anno Domini 259,201,929.

Come, let us cheer up and face our fate like men. We have a quarter of a billion years in which to get all set for what is coming.

And even at that, I notice in looking over the figures above that I have made a slight mistake: what they said was not the millionth part of a second, but the billionth. That lengthens out our time here quite considerably.

Indeed, on the whole, I am inclined to agree with the reassuring statement that one of the astronomers appended to his report, that there was no immediate occasion for alarm. No, I think not.

Scarcely had I recovered from the alarm suggested by the reports of the world coming to a stop, when I noticed a new astronomical alarm sent out from Greenwich and reluctantly corroborated by Washington.

It seems that the continents are sliding apart and that we are drifting out into the ocean. England appears to be drifting westward towards the magnetic pole, and the upper part of the American Continent is moving nearer to Asia.

The consequences of this are certainly alarming at first sight. If Great Britain disappears—Ireland first—into the northern ice, and San Francisco lands up against Yokohama like a chip floating in a horse-trough, where are we? Of what use all our years of effort?

But here the reassurance again follows, partial though it is and somewhat short of what one would wish. The rate of motion is calculated to be such that we are six inches further away across the Atlantic than we were a hundred years ago. Ship ahoy! We can still call to them. Anybody who cares to divide six thousand miles by six inches can tell to a nicety just when the Asiatics will come scrambling over the bulwarks.

In short, I should like to be allowed to pass a word of advice to the astronomers and geologists. Don’t announce these things ahead in this alarming way. Wait till they happen and then feature them up large when they’re worth while.

I understand that there are lots of other geological and astronomical disasters coming. It seems that the coast line of both New England and England itself is falling into the sea. A whole barrow load of dirt that was left near Shoreham by William the Conqueror has fallen in. Old Winchelsea and St. Michaels have rolled under the water. Passamaquoddy Bay is engulfing New Brunswick. Never mind. Let us eat, drink, and be merry. We don’t need to board on Passamaquoddy Bay.

The sun, it seems, is burning out. A few more billion years and its last flicker will fade. Many of the stars are dead already and others dying. The moon is gone—a waste of dead rocks in a glare of reflected light. Even empty space is shrinking and puckering into curves like a withering orange.

Courage! Forget it! Let us go right on like a band of brothers while it lasts.