The fireside university of modern invention, discovery, industry and art for home circle study and entertainment . t of 1882. The temptation will not be again presented 30 460 THE FIRESIDE UNIVERSITY until an entirely new generation of Star-gazers has arisen, awayoff in the year 2004. The Planet moves in nearly a true was undoubtedly the second body which the ancientsdiscovered as moving differently from the fixed Stars, the first,of course, having been the Moon. Where is the Earth? The Earth upon which we live is the next member of the Solarfamily. It is called a spheroid —which
The fireside university of modern invention, discovery, industry and art for home circle study and entertainment . t of 1882. The temptation will not be again presented 30 460 THE FIRESIDE UNIVERSITY until an entirely new generation of Star-gazers has arisen, awayoff in the year 2004. The Planet moves in nearly a true was undoubtedly the second body which the ancientsdiscovered as moving differently from the fixed Stars, the first,of course, having been the Moon. Where is the Earth? The Earth upon which we live is the next member of the Solarfamily. It is called a spheroid —which means sphere-like inshape, and is understood to cover a multitude of discrepancies,in the way of twenty-nine miles of flattening at the poles anddecided bellyings at the tropics. The law of gravitation estab-lished by Sir Isaac Newton (the theory of which was that theapple in falling from the tree was attracted to the Earth, andin turn attracted the Earth—the greater body rising in exactproportion to the superiority of its size) is upheld by manyphenomena, the most convincing of which is the action of the. Fig. 172. ORBIT OF THE EARTH. ocean when passing under the Moon or Sun. The mighty deepreally rises up many feet, in obedience to the law which is sup-posed to rule the Universe. This complex shipping of thebulk of the Earth must always remain a great obstacle in thedetermination of the exact shape of our Planet. The Earth is ASTRONOMY. 467 91,430,000 miles away from the Sun. Mr. Proctor estimated itas weighing six thousand millions of millions of tons. What is the Atmosphere ? The Earth is surrounded by a dense atmosphere—not so thick,however, as that of Venus. This atmosphere used to be thoughtto extend forty miles upward, but recent discoveries showingthe inability of light to penetrate a perfect vacuum have hoistour air theoretically to a vastly greater height, and there is agrowing tendency to believe that all space itself is filled withsomething which, if not rare
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