Miscellaneous Papers. 259 



PRELIMINARY STUDIES ON THE MOON. 



P.y F. A. .MAui.Air, Manhattan, Kan. 



TX/HILE the moon has been a favorite field of study not 

 ' '' only for the astronomer but for every lover of nature 

 for centuries, the history that is written all over her surface 

 has been misread by all, if my interpretation of it be the 

 correct one; and as to that I will leave the Academy to judge. 



Let us look for a moment at a brief outline of the present 

 theory of the formation of our solar system. 



Without going into details, it is supposed that two immense 

 dead suns wandering through space met in such a way that 

 either one or both of them were reduced to fragments, and 

 that these fragments filled the space now occupied by our 

 present solar system. 



In time, by the law of attraction, the larger bodies attracted 

 the smaller ones and the largest became our sun, and the 

 other larger fragments developed according to the laws of mo- 

 mentum and attraction into the planets as we now know them. 



By this coming together heat was produced, the larger 

 masses becoming very much hotter than the smaller ones, by 

 reason of the mass, and in time this heat was and is radiated 

 into space, till we have the system in its present condition. 



That this chaotic condition did exist at the first, and that 

 our system was made up from these fragments of former 

 suns, is clearly enough proven by the m_eteors that are seen 

 to plunge into our atmosphere every night, many of them to 

 be consumed by frictional heat before reaching the earth, and 

 the few that do reach the earth are found to be of the same 

 elemental composition as that of our planet, thus showing a 

 common origin. 



So far we may agree with the theory, as it certainly is in 

 harmony with all of the records that are about us so far as 

 we have been able to read them, and exactly coincides with 

 the deductions that called forth this paper. 



According to the present theory, the landscape as we know 

 it is the result of cooling, shrinking and wrinkling, and thus 

 producing oceans, valleys and mountains, and volcanoes are 

 supposed by some to be vents from the molten interior. 



According to this theory, the larger the mass the rougher 



