Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/435

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SHIFTING OF THE EARTH'S AXIS
431

They are both located in south latitude 31° 55'—one at Bayswater, near Perth, West Australia, and the other at Oncativo, in the Argentine Republic, about forty-five miles from the National Observatory at Cordoba.[1] Definite results from these observations have not yet been obtained, but Dr. Albrecht has recently published a short note stating that a provisional reduction of the observations obtained at the two southern stations shows that z has the same sign at the south parallel as at the north, and probably the same magnitude. If this is true the hypothesis of a shift in the center of gravity of the earth must be abandoned. This term is zero about ten days before the equinoxes and reaches its maximum values, −0".048 and +0".044, about ten days before the summer and winter solstices, respectively. These facts would seem to favor the meteorological explanation of origin of this term.

The motion of the earth's north pole, from the time the International Latitude Stations were established in the fall of 1899 to the beginning

Fig. 6.
  1. In addition to these eight stations under the International Geodetic Association regular observations for latitude are made at Poulkova, Russia, in latitude +59° 46'; at Leiden, +52° 9'; and at Tokio, +35° 39'.