COSMIC RAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 309, 31 December 1930, Page 7

COSMIC RAYS.

Universe Being Wound Up Like

A Clock.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST'S VIEW.

NEW YORK, December 30.

A message from Cleveland, Ohio, says Dr. Robert Millikan, an eminent physicist/addressing the opening session of the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented arguments based on hie recent researches into the cosmic rays, prove his contention that the universe is like a clock, constantly being wound up by a creator, who is constantly "on his job."

Dr. Millikan, discussing "atomic disintegration ; arid . atomic synthesis," assured" the gathering that a. scientific belief in evolutionary progress did not imply disbelief in religion. He offered his theory of increasing universal energy as an argument to the British scientists Sir James Jeans and Dr. A. S. Eddington, who contend that the energy of the universe is disappearing owing to the working of the second law of thermodynamics.

Dr. Robert Millikan, director of physics in the University of California, was awarded th? Hughes Medal of the Royal Society'in 1923, the Nobel Prize for physics (for insolating the, electron) in 1923, 'and the Faraday ; Medal of the London Chemical Society, 1924, and other foreign honours, and also the-gold medal of the Society of Arts aud Sciences ior his theory of the creation of cosmic rays, 1928. Sir James Jeans is secretary of .the Royal Society, and a noted astronomer and' physicist. Dr. Eddington is Plurnsan professor of astronomy 'in Cambridge University.