Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
An Astronomer in the Hollow Globe.
Endeavors to Find a Way of Escape to the Outside; Briefly Reviews our Demonstrations and Remains Skeptical.
EDITOR FLAMING SWORD:—Courtesy requires answers to your questions of some time ago, though they tend to lead away from the main question, the figure of the earth.
Q.—"Will the professor assert that the orbit and velocity of a planet would be the same if it weighed nothing?"
A.—Every material body must weigh something.
Q. 2.—"What would be the result if the planet were increased to a mass too heavy to be moved by the force applied?"
A.—Any body free to move would be moved by any force. The question, however, assumes impossibility of movement "by the force applied," whatever that may mean.
Q. 3.—"What is the source of the projectile energy of the planets?"
A.—Motion is eternal and needs no "projectile energy" to start it. At least that proposition cannot be refuted if it cannot be proved. It goes beyond the boundaries of possible human knowledge. We can only speculate on it, and such is my provisional opinion.
Q. 4.—"Will the professor tell us which is correct?" (referring to the different theories of the tides.)
A.—The earth and moon mutually attract each other, and the centrifugal force which keeps them apart must also be mutual; and that condition is realized by their both revolving around their common center of gravity, and the anti-lunar tide results from the earth's movement around that center,—at least, such seems to me to be a very sound theory.
I must decidedly dissent from your proposition, that "'Laws that do not involve the cause of planetary motion are not laws at all.'" Kepler's previously quoted third law is referred to, more particularly, though the proposition is general. If the two factors on which that proposition is based—motion and distance from the primary—are in fact, found to be related to each other as the law sets forth, and it is consequently found reliable to work by, its status as a law is in no degree impaired by our ignorance of the cause of planetary motion; just as we may rely on the infallibility of the laws of chemical combination, while profoundly ignorant of the cause of chemical affinity.
You do neither wisely nor well to sneer at Kepler in terms implying that he made the laws he discovered, and might have made better ones "while he was at it" if he had been so minded. As well sneer at Columbus for not making a better America "while he was at it." The undying fame of Kepler rests on the fact that his discoveries first placed the truth of the Copernican system within the pale of mathematical demonstration.
—PROF. J. W. T., Salem, O.
- --
The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the report's argument and reported measurements without presenting its conclusion as an independently established result.
Source citation: The Flaming Sword · Vol. 13, No. 27 · May 26, 1899 · PDF p. 12
← Flaming Sword Archive
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 13, No. 27 · May 26, 1899 · PDF p. 12