ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE.

Auckland Star, Issue XXXVI, 21 October 1905, Page 9

ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE.

. MAN'S FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE L THE MYSTERY. ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR DARWIN. At Johannesburg, on A.ugust 30, Pro- ' fessor Darwin delivered the second part of his presidential address before the ] British Association. Professor Darwin, briefly recapitulating the first portion of his address, delivered at Capetown, in ' ■which he made a general survey of evolution in its various branches, said that both the inconceivably small and the inconceivably large should fall under a general law. if it were a true oue; and the history of satellites, planets and stars presented at least as great an interest as that of atoms and molecules. Accordingly, the transition from the small to the large had seemed to him a convenient halting-place, and he now proposed to resume the discussion by considering various theories of celestial evolution. The German asi tronomer Bode long ago propounded a i simple empirical law concerning the dislaiice at which the several planets move about the sun, and his formula embraced so large a number of cases with accuracy that they were compelled to believe that it arose in some manner from the primitive conditions of the planetary system. There were certain perpetual orbits in which a meteoric stone or minor planet might move for ever without collision. But when such an immortal career had been discovered for our minor planet, it still remained to discover whether the slightest possible departure from the prescribed orbit would become greater and greater, and ultimately lead to a collision with the sun or Jove, or whether the body would travel so as to cross and recross the exact perpetual orbit, always remaining close to it. If the slightest departure inevitably increased as time went on, the orbit "was unstable! if. on the other hand, it only led to a slight | wariness m the path described it was ! stable. After discussing in some detail THE CELEBRATED NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS, first suggested by Kant and later restated independently hy the French mathematician Laplace, Professor Darwin sketched the evolution of a rotating liquid planet like the earth, which was the first stable species of oar family, and dealt with the influence of tidal oscillations. In the retrospect both day and month were found continuously shortening. The system might be traced back to a time when the day and month were identical in length, and were both only about four or five of our present hours. Moreover, when the month was only some four or five of our present hours iv length, the moon most harve been only a few thousand miles from the earth's surface—a great contrast with the present distance ef 240,000 miles. It might well be argued from this conclusion alone that the moon separated from the earth more or less as a single portion of matter at a time immediately antecedent to the initial stage to which she had been traced. But there was a yet more weighty argument favourable to this view, for it appeared that the initial stage was one in which the stability of the special of morion was tottering; so that the system presented the characteristics of a transitional form, which would denote a, change of type or species.'