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SEARTH-, 1/1 STERY
187 There were various beliefs regarding the shape of eartha "some believed the earth to be cylindrical, while some regarded it as a six-sided parallelopiped; some beheved it to be spherical like melon, while others considered it to be betal leaf shaped Columbus tried to prove that it is conch-shaped "
In modern science, the speculations about the creation and the maintenance of the earth are found to be even more fantastic The scientists say: "We believe, nevertheless, that some thousand million years ago this rare event took place, and that a second star, wandering blindly through space, happened to come within hailing distances of the sun Just as the sun and the moon raise tides on the earth, so this second star must have raised tides on the surface of the sun But they would be very different from the puny tides which the small mass of the moon raises in our oceans; a huge tidal wave must have travelled over the surface of the sun ultimately forming a moun. tain of prodigious height which would rise ever higher and higher as the cause of the disturbance came nearer and nearer. And, before the second star began to recede, tidal pull had become so powerful that this monntain was torn to pieces and threw off small fragments of itself such as the crest of a wave throws off spray. These small fragments have been circulating around their parentsun ever-since. They are the planets, great and small, of wluch our earth is one"
2 d. P 31 3 The mysterious Universe
