The article below was published in the daily newspaper Franc-Tireur, Paris, France, page 3, on August 25, 1954.
|
Has the Moon "had babies"? Such is the question one might ask since an American magazine claimed that two meteors now accompany it in our orbit, revolving around the Earth at respective distances of 450 and 1,000 kilometers.
According to this weekly, Aviation Week Magazine, the appearance of these two new satellites had thrown senior officers of the U.S. Air Force into deep disarray (for quite some time, talk had been circulating about the creation of artificial satellites from which atomic attacks could be launched), until Dr. Lincoln La Paz, director of extraterrestrial bodies at the University of New Mexico, went to the Palomar Observatory, where he was able to confirm that they were indeed meteors.
But the French scientists we were able to contact were rather skeptical about this observation. Not that they questioned the seriousness of Dr. La Paz or the work of the Palomar Observatory, which specializes in the study of nearby planets. But they are wary of the tendency of American magazines to discover extraordinary phenomena (such as that star which, some time ago, was said to be heading toward Earth...).
- "If the fact were true, we would know about it," Mr. Danjon, director of the Meudon Observatory, told us. "We have two information agencies which, from Copenhagen and from Harvard near Boston, send us by telegram all interesting information. Yet, they have reported nothing to us."
"The trajectory of any satellite would make it pass over numerous points of the Earth. These famous meteors would therefore have been seen by other observers."
"Moreover, a 'satellite' at 450 kilometers from Earth would have absolutely uncertain stability... Its orbit not being circular, sooner or later (and rather sooner than later) it would fall back to Earth. Artificial satellites, whose realization may be possible on paper, but whose manufacture would be infinitely more difficult than that of the atomic bomb, would have to be launched at least 1,200 kilometers above our ground..."
