| Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps by Kees Boeke (1957) |
page 15 |
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| TOP Flaps 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 |
| Powers of ten: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 <> 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 |
 
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| 10. |
It must have struck the reader that in the last two illustrations the shaded part
of the earth was not of even darkness, but was clearly lighter on the left hand
side. The cause of this becomes clear in this picture. In it we not only see the
earth (1), its umbra (2) and the path (3) along which it moves, but we notice
around the earth what looks like a circle. This line (4) is the path or orbit of
the moon as it moves around the earth. The actual position of the moon (5)
on that December 21st when we were supposed to make our celestial jump of
exploration is shown. It now is clear that as the moon was there on the left,
the night on earth was lit up on that side. As light travels 300,000 kilometers
per second (that is, 3 centimeters on this scale), we see that it would need 1.3
seconds to cover the distance from the moon to the earth.
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This content is from Kees Boeke's book, Cosmic View: The Universe
in 40 Jumps. It has been placed online without permission. Copyright (C) 1957 by Kees Boeke. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo-copying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission. |