PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 126, 31 May 1910, Page 2

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

PROFESSOR BICKERTON'S LECTURE. "PARTIAL IMPACT" AND "THE THIRD BODY." Notwithstanding the unpleasant weather, tha lecture-room of the Colonial Museum was well filled last evening, the attraction being a lecture by Professor A. W. Bickercon, of Chrietchnrch, on ■his original theory of the partial impact of bodies in space and the formation thereby of third bodies. The president (Mr. A. Hamilton) w-as in the chair. Only the briefest outline can be given of a lecture which, though singularly lucid, was necessarily abstruse, and was illustrated by figures and diagrams on the black-board. Astronomers, said the professor, -,-ere now all agreed in recognising the fact of the existence of "dead suns," and #he fact of grazing collisions among the stars, but we-re not in agreement as to the dynamic and physical changes produced by such collisions. The common assumption was that the two bodies concerned were enormously increased in temperature by collision ; he held, on the contrary, that they were healed only to a. comparatively slight extent; but that the immediate portions concerned in the collision were struck off altogether, forming a third body, charged with enormous energy, developing heat and light to an extent unparalleled by any other body of its own weight, and capa-blo of producing extraordinary phenomena to correspond. One of the "novae," or new temporary stars, for example, for a time outshone any staT in the heavens, increasing in brightness till it. exceeded- suceessrvely the planets Jupiter and Venus (in quadrature), and became visible in the heavens at noonday. His theory was this : not that the colliding bodies heated up and coalesced, bnt rather that they acted the ree-pectiye parts of flint and steel, the resultant third body being struck off in the form of a gigajitic cosmic spark. The lecturer entered minutely into the enormous energies involved, and explained that he had talc-en up 'the problem more than thirty years ago — not as astronomer or astrophysicist, in which sciences he had had no training- — but as an engineer with a knowledge _of thermodynamics. He had stated his problems and worked out their solutions, placing his results before astronomers for examination in the light of actual research. He could only say that the great works on the science contained on neaxly every page facts which could only, in his opinion, be explained by his theory. This was notably the case in the department of spectrum analysis. A vote of thanks was moved by Mt. A. C. Gifford, w-ho instanced various phenomena which were still a puzzle to astronomers, and to which Professor Bickerton's hypothesis seemed to furnish a key. Dr. Kennedy, F.R.A.S., who seconded the motion, said that though foe could not follow the theory in all points — in fact, he lacked the requisite knowledge to investigate the dynamic problems involved — yet he recognised /that Professor Bickerton -had devised an admirable working theory worthy of being put to the test by astronomers and investigators into astrophysics. The lectnrer had been too modest to mention one important fact — that his hypothetical suggestions as the resiilts of spectrum analysis of the 'radiations from variable stars and "novae" had been confirmed in a most remarkable manner by subsequent investigations. The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation.