Pioneers of Science Part 33

Winds and ocean currents have no such effect (as Mr. Fronde in _Oceania_ supposes they have), because they are all accompanied by a precisely equal counter-current somewhere else, and no internal rearrangement of fluid can affect the motion of a ma.s.s as a whole; but the tides are in different case, being produced, not by internal inequalities of temperature, but by a straightforward pull from an external body.

The ultimate effect of tidal friction and dissipation of energy will, therefore, be to gradually r.e.t.a.r.d the earth till it does not rotate with reference to the moon, _i.e._ till it rotates once while the moon revolves once; in other words, to make the day and the month equal. The same cause must have been in operation, but with eighty-fold greater intensity, on the moon. It has ceased now, because the rotation has stopped, but if ever the moon rotated on its axis with respect to the earth, and if it were either fluid itself or possessed any liquid ocean, then the tides caused by the pull of the earth must have been prodigious, and would tend to stop its rotation. Have they not succeeded? Is it not probable that this is _why_ the moon always now turns the same face towards us? It is believed to be almost certainly the cause. If so, there was a time when the moon behaved differently--when it rotated more quickly than it revolved, and exhibited to us its whole surface. And at this era, too, the earth itself must have rotated a little faster, for it has been losing speed ever since.

We have thus arrived at this fact, that a thousand years ago the day was a trifle shorter than it is now. A million years ago it was, perhaps, an hour shorter. Twenty million years ago it must have been much shorter.

Fifty million years ago it may have been only a few hours long. The earth may have spun round then quite quickly. But there is a limit. If it spun too fast it would fly to pieces. Attach shot by means of wax to the whirling earth model, Fig. 110, and at a certain speed the cohesion of the wax cannot hold them, so they fly off. The earth is held together not by cohesion but by gravitation; it is not difficult to reckon how fast the earth must spin for gravity at its surface to be annulled, and for portions to fly off. We find it about one revolution in three hours.

This is a critical speed. If ever the day was three hours long, something must have happened. The day can never have been shorter than that; for if it were, the earth would have a tendency to fly in pieces, or, at least, to separate into two pieces. Remember this, as a natural result of a three-hour day, which corresponds to an unstable state of things; remember also that in some past epoch a three-hour day is a probability.

If we think of the state of things going on in the earth's atmosphere, if it had an atmosphere at that remote date, we shall recognize the existence of the most fearful tornadoes. The trade winds, which are now peaceful agents of commerce, would then be perpetual hurricanes, and all the denudation agents of the geologist would be in a state of feverish activity. So, too, would the tides: instead of waiting six hours between low and high tide, we should have to wait only three-quarters of an hour. Every hour-and-a-half the water would execute a complete swing from high tide to high again.

Very well, now leave the earth, and think what has been happening to the moon all this while.

We have seen that the moon pulls the tidal hump nearest to it back; but action and reaction are always equal and opposite--it cannot do that without itself getting pulled forward. The pull of the earth on the moon will therefore not be quite central, but will be a little in advance of its centre; hence, by Kepler's second law, the rate of description of areas by its radius vector cannot be constant, but must increase (p.

208). And the way it increases will be for the radius vector to lengthen, so as to sweep out a bigger area. Or, to put it another way, the extra speed tending to be gained by the moon will fling it further away by extra centrifugal force. This last is not so good a way of regarding the matter; though it serves well enough for the case of a ball whirled at the end of an elastic string. After having got up the whirl, the hand holding the string may remain almost fixed at the centre of the circle, and the motion will continue steadily; but if the hand be moved so as always to pull the string a little in advance of the centre, the speed of whirl will increase, the elastic will be more and more stretched, until the whirling ball is describing a much larger circle.

But in this case it will likewise be going faster--distance and speed increase together. This is because it obeys a different law from gravitation--the force is not inversely as the square, or any other single power, of the distance. It does not obey any of Kepler's laws, and so it does not obey the one which now concerns us, viz. the third; which practically states that the further a planet is from the centre the slower it goes; its velocity varies inversely with the square root of its distance (p. 74).

If, instead of a ball held by elastic, it were a satellite held by gravity, an increase in distance must be accompanied by a diminution in speed. The time of revolution varies as the square of the cube root of the distance (Kepler's third law). Hence, the tidal reaction on the moon, having as its primary effect, as we have seen, the pulling the moon a little forward, has also the secondary or indirect effect of making it move slower and go further off. It may seem strange that an accelerating pull, directed in front of the centre, and therefore always pulling the moon the way it is going, should r.e.t.a.r.d it; and that a r.e.t.a.r.ding force like friction, if such a force acted, should hasten it, and make it complete its...o...b..t sooner; but so it precisely is.

Gradually, but very slowly, the moon is receding from us, and the month is becoming longer. The tides of the earth are pushing it away. This is not a periodic disturbance, like the temporary acceleration of its motion discovered by Laplace, which in a few centuries, more or less, will be reversed; it is a disturbance which always acts one way, and which is therefore c.u.mulative. It is superposed upon all periodic changes, and, though it seems smaller than they, it is more inexorable.

In a thousand years it makes scarcely an appreciable change, but in a million years its persistence tells very distinctly; and so, in the long run, the month is getting longer and the moon further off. Working backwards also, we see that in past ages the moon must have been nearer to us than it is now, and the month shorter.

Now just note what the effect of the increased nearness of the moon was upon our tides. Remember that the tide-generating force varies inversely as the cube of distance, wherefore a small change of distance will produce a great difference in the tide-force.

The moon's present distance is 240 thousand miles. At a time when it was only 190 thousand miles, the earth's tides would have been twice as high as they are now. The pushing away action was then a good deal more violent, and so the process went on quicker. The moon must at some time have been just half its present distance, and the tides would then have risen, not 20 or 30 feet, but 160 or 200 feet. A little further back still, we have the moon at one-third of its present distance from the earth, and the tides 600 feet high. Now just contemplate the effect of a 600-foot tide. We are here only about 150 feet above the level of the sea; hence, the tide would sweep right over us and rush far away inland.

At high tide we should have some 200 feet of blue water over our heads.

There would be nothing to stop such a tide as that in this neighbourhood till it reached the high lands of Derbyshire. Manchester would be a seaport then with a vengeance!

The day was shorter then, and so the interval between tide and tide was more like ten than twelve hours. Accordingly, in about five hours, all that ma.s.s of water would have swept back again, and great tracts of sand between here and Ireland would be left dry. Another five hours, and the water would come tearing and driving over the country, applying its furious waves and currents to the work of denudation, which would proceed apace. These high tides of enormously distant past ages const.i.tute the denuding agent which the geologist required. They are very ancient--more ancient than the Carboniferous period, for instance, for no trees could stand the furious storms that must have been prevalent at this time. It is doubtful whether any but the very lowest forms of life then existed. It is the strata at the bottom of the geological scale that are of the most portentous thickness, and the only organism suspected in them is the doubtful _Eozoon Canadense_. Sir Robert Ball believes, and several geologists agree with him, that the mighty tides we are contemplating may have been coaeval with this ancient Laurentian formation, and others of like nature with it.

But let us leave geology now, and trace the inverted progress of events as we recede in imagination back through the geological era, beyond, into the dim vista of the past, when the moon was still closer and closer to the earth, and was revolving round it quicker and quicker, before life or water existed on it, and when the rocks were still molten.

Suppose the moon once touched the earth's surface, it is easy to calculate, according to the principles of gravitation, and with a reasonable estimate of its size as then expanded by heat, how fast it must then have revolved round the earth, so as just to save itself from falling in. It must have gone round once every three hours. The month was only three hours long at this initial epoch.

Remember, however, the initial length of the day. We found that it was just possible for the earth to rotate on its axis in three hours, and that when it did so, something was liable to separate from it. Here we find the moon in contact with it, and going round it in this same three-hour period. Surely the two are connected. Surely the moon was a part of the earth, and was separating from it.

That is the great discovery--the origin of the moon.

Once, long ages back, at date unknown, but believed to be certainly as much as fifty million years ago, and quite possibly one hundred million, there was no moon, only the earth as a molten globe, rapidly spinning on its axis--spinning in about three hours. Gradually, by reason of some disturbing causes, a protuberance, a sort of bud, forms at one side, and the great inchoate ma.s.s separates into two--one about eighty times as big as the other. The bigger one we now call earth, the smaller we now call moon. Round and round the two bodies went, pulling each other into tremendously elongated or prolate shapes, and so they might have gone on for a long time. But they are unstable, and cannot go on thus: they must either separate or collapse. Some disturbing cause acts again, and the smaller ma.s.s begins to revolve less rapidly. Tides at once begin--gigantic tides of molten lava hundreds of miles high; tides not in free ocean, for there was none then, but in the pasty ma.s.s of the entire earth. Immediately the series of changes I have described begins, the speed of rotation gets slackened, the moon's ma.s.s gets pushed further and further away, and its time of revolution grows rapidly longer. The changes went on rapidly at first, because the tides were so gigantic; but gradually, and by slow degrees, the bodies get more distant, and the rate of change more moderate. Until, after the lapse of ages, we find the day twenty-four hours long, the moon 240,000 miles distant, revolving in 27-1/3 days, and the tides only existing in the water of the ocean, and only a few feet high. This is the era we call "to-day."

The process does not stop here: still the stately march of events goes on; and the eye of Science strives to penetrate into the events of the future with the same clearness as it has been able to descry the events of the past. And what does it see? It will take too long to go into full detail: but I will shortly summarize the results. It sees this first--the day and the month both again equal, but both now about 1,400 hours long. Neither of these bodies rotating with respect to each other--the two as if joined by a bar--and total cessation of tide-generating action between them.

The date of this period is one hundred and fifty millions of years hence, but unless some unforeseen catastrophe intervenes, it must a.s.suredly come. Yet neither will even this be the final stage; for the system is disturbed by the tide-generating force of the sun. It is a small effect, but it is c.u.mulative; and gradually, by much slower degrees than anything we have yet contemplated, we are presented with a picture of the month getting gradually shorter than the day, the moon gradually approaching instead of receding, and so, incalculable myriads of ages hence, precipitating itself upon the surface of the earth whence it arose.

Such a catastrophe is already imminent in a neighbouring planet--Mars.

Mars' princ.i.p.al moon circulates round him at an absurd pace, completing a revolution in 7-1/2 hours, and it is now only 4,000 miles from his surface. The planet rotates in twenty-four hours as we do; but its tides are following its moon more quickly than it rotates after them; they are therefore tending to increase its rate of spin, and to r.e.t.a.r.d the revolution of the moon. Mars is therefore slowly but surely pulling its moon down on to itself, by a reverse action to that which separated our moon. The day shorter than the month forces a moon further away; the month shorter than the day tends to draw a satellite nearer.

This moon of Mars is not a large body: it is only twenty or thirty miles in diameter, but it weighs some forty billion tons, and will ultimately crash along the surface with a velocity of 8,000 miles an hour. Such a blow must produce the most astounding effects when it occurs, but I am unable to tell you its probable date.

So far we have dealt mainly with the earth and its moon; but is the existence of tides limited to these bodies? By no means. No body in the solar system is rigid, no body in the stellar universe is rigid. All must be susceptible of some tidal deformation, and hence, in all of them, agents like those we have traced in the history of the earth and moon must be at work: the motion of all must be complicated by the phenomena of tides. It is Prof. George Darwin who has worked out the astronomical influence of the tides, on the principles of Sir William Thomson: it is Sir Robert Ball who has extended Mr. Darwin's results to the past history of our own and other worlds.[32]

Tides are of course produced in the sun by the action of the planets, for the sun rotates in twenty-five days or thereabouts, while the planets revolve in much longer periods than that. The princ.i.p.al tide-generating bodies will be Venus and Jupiter; the greater nearness of one rather more than compensating for the greater ma.s.s of the other.

It may be interesting to tabulate the relative tide-producing powers of the planets on the sun. They are as follows, calling that of the earth 1,000:--

RELATIVE TIDE-PRODUCING POWERS OF THE PLANETS ON THE SUN.

Mercury 1,121 Venus 2,339 Earth 1,000 Mars 304 Jupiter 2,136 Saturn 1,033 Ura.n.u.s 21 Neptune 9

The power of all of them is very feeble, and by acting on different sides they usually partly neutralize each other's action; but occasionally they get all on one side, and in that case some perceptible effect may be produced; the probable effect seems likely to be a gentle heaving tide in the solar surface, with breaking up of any incipient crust; and such an effect may be considered as evidenced periodically by the great increase in the number of solar spots which then break out.

The solar tides are, however, much too small to appreciably push any planet away, hence we are not to suppose that the planets originated by budding from the sun, in contradiction of the nebular hypothesis. Nor is it necessary to a.s.sume that the satellites, as a cla.s.s, originated in the way ours did; though they may have done so. They were more probably secondary rings. Our moon differs from other satellites in being exceptionally large compared with the size of its primary; it is as big as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The earth is the only one of the small planets that has an appreciable moon, and hence there is nothing forced or unnatural in supposing that it may have had an exceptional history.

Evidently, however, tidal phenomena must be taken into consideration in any treatment of the solar system through enormous length of time, and it will probably play a large part in determining its future.

When Laplace and Lagrange investigated the question of the stability or instability of the solar system, they did so on the hypothesis that the bodies composing it were rigid. They reached a grand conclusion--that all the mutual perturbations of the solar system were periodic--that whatever changes were going on would reach a maximum and then begin to diminish; then increase again, then diminish, and so on. The system was stable, and its changes were merely like those of a swinging pendulum.

But this conclusion is not final. The hypothesis that the bodies are rigid is not strictly true: and directly tidal deformation is taken into consideration it is perceived to be a potent factor, able in the long run to upset all their calculations. But it is so utterly and inconceivably minute--it only produces an appreciable effect after millions of years--whereas the ordinary perturbations go through their swings in some hundred thousand years or so at the most. Granted it is small, but it is terribly persistent; and it always acts in one direction. Never does it cease: never does it begin to act oppositely and undo what it has done. It is like the perpetual dropping of water.

There may be only one drop in a twelvemonth, but leave it long enough, and the hardest stone must be worn away at last.

We have been speaking of millions of years somewhat familiarly; but what, after all, is a million years that we should not speak familiarly of it? It is longer than our lifetime, it is true. To the ephemeral insects whose lifetime is an hour, a year might seem an awful period, the mid-day sun might seem an almost stationary body, the changes of the seasons would be unknown, everything but the most fleeting and rapid changes would appear permanent and at rest. Conversely, if our life-period embraced myriads of aeons, things which now seem permanent would then appear as in a perpetual state of flux. A continent would be sometimes dry, sometimes covered with ocean; the stars we now call fixed would be moving visibly before our eyes; the earth would be humming on its axis like a top, and the whole of human history might seem as fleeting as a cloud of breath on a mirror.

Evolution is always a slow process. To evolve such an animal as a greyhound from its remote ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin, needs immense tracts of time; and if the evolution of some feeble animal crawling on the surface of this planet is slow, shall the stately evolution of the planetary orbs themselves be hurried? It may be that we are able to trace the history of the solar system for some thousand million years or so; but for how much longer time must it not have a history--a history, and also a future--entirely beyond our ken?

Those who study the stars have impressed upon them the existence of the most immeasurable distances, which yet are swallowed up as nothing in the infinitude of s.p.a.ce. No less are we compelled to recognize the existence of incalculable aeons of time, and yet to perceive that these are but as drops in the ocean of eternity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The following account of Mars's motion is from the excellent small manual of astronomy by Dr. Haughton of Trinity College, Dublin:--(P.

151) "Mars's motion is very unequal; when he first appears in the morning emerging from the rays of the sun, his motion is direct and rapid; it afterwards becomes slower, and he becomes stationary when at an elongation of 137 from the sun; then his motion becomes retrograde, and its velocity increases until he is in opposition to the sun at 180; at this time the retrograde motion is most rapid, and afterwards diminishes until he is 137 distant from the sun on the other side, when Mars again becomes stationary; his motion then becomes direct, and increases in velocity until it reaches a maximum, when the planet is again in conjunction with the sun. The retrograde motion of this planet lasts for 73 days: and its arc of retrogradation is 16."

[2] It is not so easy to plot the path of the sun among the stars by direct observation, as it is to plot the path of a planet; because sun and stars are not visible together. Hipparchus used the moon as an intermediary; since sun and moon are visible together, and also moon and stars.

[3] This is, however, by no means the whole of the matter. The motion is not a simple circle nor has it a readily specifiable period. There are several disturbing causes. All that is given here is a first rough approximation.

[4] The proof is easy, and ought to occur in books on solid geometry. By a "regular" solid is meant one with all its faces, edges, angles, &c., absolutely alike: it is of these perfectly symmetrical bodies that there are only five. Crystalline forms are practically infinite in number.

[5] Best known to us by his Christian name, as so many others of that time are known, _e.g._ Raphael Sanzio, Dante Alighieri, Michael Angelo Buonarotti. The rule is not universal. Ta.s.so and Ariosto are surnames.

[6] It would seem that the fact that all bodies of every material tend to fall at the same rate is still not clearly known. Confusion is introduced by the resistance of the air. But a little thought should make it clear that the effect of the air is a mere disturbance, to be eliminated as far as possible, since the atmosphere has nothing to do with gravitation. The old fashioned "guinea and feather experiment"

ill.u.s.trates that in a vacuum things entirely different in specific gravity or surface drop at the same pace.

[7] Karl von Gebler (Galileo), p. 13.

[8] It is of course the "silver lining" of clouds that outside observers see.

[9] L.U.K., _Life of Galileo_, p. 26.