Earth's poles

“ The general advancement in the knowledge of our globe, which follows the work of polar exploration, is not at first perceived. The collective results are rearranged and interwoven with the other threads which go to make up the fabric of the various branches of natural science. Around the two poles of the earth, and particularly around the south pole, there are extensive unknown [454] regions. In these regions are hidden the finishing filaments of much exact knowledge. To seek these is the true object of polar exploration. ”

“ Bodies near the Poles are heavier than those towards the Equator, because they are nearer the Earth’s centre, where the whole force of the Earth’s attraction is accumulated. They are also heavier because their centrifugal force is less on account of their diurnal motion being slower. For both these reasons, bodies carried from the Poles toward the Equator, gradually lose of their weight. Experiments prove that a pendulum, which vibrates seconds near the Poles vibrates slower near the Equator, which shews that it is lighter or less attracted there. ”

“ The third phenomenon belonging here is the displacement of the poles of rotation in the course of the earth’s history. In Chapter VI we have deduced the position of the poles in the Carboniferous period; it was essentially different from that of to-day. We certainly do not know whether the position is also altered in relation to the interior of the earth, or if, as many authors contend, the crust only has been displaced. Presumably both occur. But, whichever be true, we need in each case the assumption that the globe, or a part of it, is viscous. ”

“ Whereas, at the Poles of our Earth, although the Sun is for half a year together above the Horizon, yet he never ascends above, nor descends below it, more than 231⁄2 degrees. When the Sun is in the Equinoctial, or in that Circle which divides the northern half of the Heavens from the southern, he is seen with one half of his Disc above the Horizon of the North Pole, and the other half above the Horizon of the South Pole ”

“ One set of circles called parallels of latitude are drawn east and west round the globe parallel to the equator, and becoming smaller and smaller until the smallest runs close round their common central point, which is one of the poles. Each pole of the earth is the centre of such a set of circles all parallel to the equator. Since each circle is unvarying in its distance from the equator, all places which are situated anywhere on that circle have the same latitude, or distance from the equator, either north or south. ”

“ The ice at each pole of the earth forms an immense cupola, the arch of which extends some thousand miles over the continents; the thickness of which, beyond the 60th degree of latitude, is several hundred feet. Navigators have assigned to detached masses, which are met with floating at sea, an elevation of from 1,500 to 122 1,800 feet.80 There can be no doubt but that the thickness of these cupolas of ice is much greater nearer the poles; for astronomy sometimes presents in the heavens so vast an image of them, that the rotundity of the earth seems to be considerably affected thereby. ”

“ The water at the pole is about 13 miles nearer to the centre of the earth than the water at the equator; but there is not on that account any tendency in the sea to flow back from the equator towards the poles; neither is there any tendency to motion one way or the other in the atmospherical ocean by reason of the oblateness of its surface. ”

“ Every one knows that, in consequence of the axis of the earth not being perpendicular to the plane of its orbit round the sun, the poles are alternately directed more or less towards that great luminary during one part of the year, and away from it during another part. ”

“ It has poles, not mathematical points, but natural termini of force excelling in primary efficiency by the co-operation of the whole: and there are poles in like manner in the earth which our forefathers sought ever in the sky: it has an æquator, a natural dividing line between the two poles, just as the earth has: for of all lines drawn by the mathematicians on the terrestrial globe, the æquator is the natural boundary, and is not, as will hereafter appear, merely a mathematical circle. It, like the earth, acquires Direction and stability toward North and South, as the earth does ”

“ The North Pole has no existence except as an imaginary point in space, at least five hundred miles from the surface of the earth. The openings at the so-called poles are more than a thousand miles in diameter, admitting the light of the sun and holding it with a denser and more highly electrified atmosphere than our own, making perpetual daylight, for, as I have told you, when the sun crosses the line, its light is derived through the opening at the opposite pole. ”

“ Small alterations of level, possibly as much as several hundred metres, such as should lead to the emergence or submergence of an area of continental shelf, are obviously possible, for example, in the case of the wandering of the poles due to the lag of the earth in its adjustment to the new ellipsoid of rotation. ”

“ The reason why we must make the observations in this way is, because at the European Observatory we can see the North Pole, while at the Cape of Good Hope, they can only see the South Pole, The angle between the two celestial poles is necessarily 180 degrees exactly, because the directions of the lines drawn from the two places to the celestial poles are parallel to the same line, namely, the axis of the earth. ”

“ In extending the scope of the present book to touch on polar exploration, it seems well to post the reader at the very beginning on the striking antitheses of natural conditions, apparently known to only a few even among the best read and most intelligent people, existing at those mathematical points, the north and south poles, where the earth’s axis intersects the surface of the earth. ”

“ Though we cannot thus see our earth, yet we can sometimes observe one Pole of Mars and sometimes the other, and we find each of these Poles crowned with a dense white cap, which increases during the severity of its winter, and which declines again with the warmth of the ensuing summer. ”

“ Wherefore we, following an evident, sensible and tested cause, do know that the earth moves on its own poles, which are apparent to us by many magnetick demonstrations. For not only on the ground of its constancy, and its sure and permanent position, is the Earth endowed with poles and verticity: for it might be directed toward other parts of the universe, toward East or West or some other region. ”

“ The axis about which the daily rotation takes place is an imaginary straight line passing through the centre of the earth, and its extremities are called poles, hence the names of the North and the South pole. ”

“ Today, no less than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions that favor rapid evolution. ”

“ This substantial production of alternating poles upon the planet takes place through the diversity of its surface as water and land, through the oblique position of its axis, whereby summer and winter are produced, through the processes, or through the life that is upon it, through the processes of decomposition and combination effected by water, through the revival and death of vegetation, and even the white colour of snow. The planet discharges its pole in the neighbourhood of the sun, like a cork pellet, and reloads of itself at a distance from the sun ”

“ The variety in the spots may arise from the planet not being destitute of atmosphere and clouds, and what adds greatly to the probability of this is the appearance of brilliant white spots at the poles​—​one of which appears in our figure​—​which have been conjectured with some probability to be snow, as they disappear when they have been long exposed to the Sun, and are greatest when just emerging from the long night of the polar winter. ”

“ The difficulty there is not to see the pole but to see in winter the regions from which our own expeditions set out. And this because the poles are well displayed to us at times which are neither few nor very far between; while favorable occasions for marking the edge of the caps when at their greatest have neither proved so numerous nor so favorable. The tilt of the planet’s axis when conveniently placed for human observation has been the cause of the one drawback; the planet’s meteorological condition in those latitudes at that season the reason for the other. ”

“ Now, if it had been so, since the earth is flattened more than five leagues at the pole, the seas, carried to the equator by centrifugal force, would have covered mountains twice as high as the Himalayas; all the countries near the polar circle, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Siberia, Greenland, and New Britain, would have been buried in five leagues of water, while the regions at the equator, having become the pole, would have formed plateaus fifteen leagues high! ”

“ If we are to regard the pole as very near the point of greatest cold, it becomes a matter of much interest to examine whether the pole has always occupied its present position, or whether it has been subject to slow changes of place upon the earth's surface. Therefore, the geologists have appealed to astronomers to discover whether they are in possession of any observational evidence tending to show that the pole is in motion. ”

“ There is a visible tendency to a second pair of maxima nearer the poles. The poles themselves, as well as the equator, are regions of minimum occurrence. Distribution in time is governed by the spot-cycle, but the maximum lasts longer for prominences than for spots. ”

“ If the north pole inclined towards the orbit facing the rim of the table, the light would still cut the poles, the days and nights would still be equal, and there would be no changes in the seasons, though there would be a rival revolution of the globe, by causing it to turn once a year, shifting the poles end for end. ”

“ Yet, quite independent of material results, Polar exploration presents no unworthy object for scientific investigation—a region of the globe 120,000 square miles in extent never yet entered by man. The Polar question, as a problem of science, aims at determining the limits of land and water, at the perfecting of that network of lines with which comparative science seeks to surround our planet, even to its Poles. ”