Читать книгу The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream онлайн

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“Every one present this evening,” and the lecturer gave an embracing wave of his hand, “knows of the singular aberrancy in the rotational motion of the earth, which has been often geographically described as the ‘wobbling of the poles.’ Astronomers have proven a real tipping of the poles alternately to one side, and then to the other, a swaying of the poles like the recurrent oscillations of a top as it ‘goes to sleep.’ But this swaying in the earth’s case is periodic and unchanging. It is sometimes rather abrupt, and at other times the tipping is regulated and progressive; but it is established, and has had a generally accepted explanation, in the attraction of the swelling equatorial prominence of the earth by the sun and moon, while suggestions have also been made that it was due to internal shiftings of mass, or to changes of exterior weightings, through the alternate and variable formation and melting of polar snows.

“But it has in the light of the present theory of the pear-shaped earth a new and rather startling explanation.