A NEW COSMOGONY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 30, 6 February 1911, Page 6

A NEW COSMOGONY.

From the time of the epoch-making discovery of radium, so scon following and complementing Roentgen's announcement of the actinic virtues of the mysterious "X" rays, the scientific world realised that the sciences of chemistry and physics — and behind them accepted theories of the constitution and development of the material universe as we know it — would require revision from their very foundation. Thirty years ago, largely owing to the genius of the late Mr. R. A. Proctor and his almost unequalled gift of setting 'forth in lucid terms the latest conclusions of science in those abstruse branches which he had specially studied and had materially shared in advancing, the general public had a, fairly definite idea of the system which philosophers seemed to have almost too thoroughly formulated. Logically complete, it was beyond measure chilly. An apparently infinite initial reserve of force was continually and lavishly being radiated into "infinite spaoe" and lost for ever. Suns were passing from incandescence into darkness and cold, until life on the planets would die, oceans would congeal, and though occasional collisions of heavenly bodies might temporarily reillumine the spark* and prolong the agony, the last act, however distant, must come, and the curtain fall on perpetual cold, darkness, silence, and death — the whole machine at absolute rest. Mathematicians calculated the precise limits of the sun's heat, even though he should be composed of "best Newcastle coal" and fed at intervals with morsels' as big as our own globe, swept into his fiery furnace for fuel. It became the fashion to calculate also th« intervals at which our atmosphere would become irrespirable through exhaustion of oxygen, or the earth barren through the- consumption of carbon or nitrogen. But the new element, radium, revealed properties in matter unknown and unsuspected. Within it was stored marvellous l'eserves of force manifesting themselves continuously in radiation of heat, light, and electricity, and even on the "final exhaustion" theory it became manifest that indefinite and inestimable reserves of power were still available, and that the figures in either direction — from the beginning of the present order of things or forward to its assumed end — were based on data so incomplete as to be worthless. Naturally, the importance of the new discoveries was exaggerated in many directions. Radio-activity has already proved useful in the healing art, but has not revolutionised our hospital practice. Still, all students of nature, who, for the most part, hold as their working theory some doctrine of evolution, hare recognised that some of the most potent forces in nature, acting before man appeared on eartn, and powerfully affecting living organisms, must have played a large part in the I differentiation of species and the shap- j ing of the yaried forms of life- as they appear to-day. Dr. F. Watson, at the Science Congress in Sydney, under the title of "The probable influence of radio-activity in organic evolution," has just propounded an elaborate hypothesis which tho press describes as "daring,"

and which has attracted great interest. To do justice to a theory which represents probably the outcome of years of thought, and of which a bare outline occupies three columns, would be impossible ; in brief space one can only indicate the leading facts and deductions on which he bases a cosmogony of a revolutionary kind, in which certain powers unknown to man a generation ago are assigned the leading place in the evolution of all organic life as well as in the mineral world, which, as the subject of the paper was biological, was not dealt with. Radium, it must bo premised, emits very complex forces besides undergoing a transmutation in which new active substances are devolved, (t gives out three kinds of rays — alpha rays, which are completely absorbed by 2% inches of air. beta rays by 4 inches, and gamma rays, which travel far and penetrate to varying extent most organic substances, being checked or "inhibited" by great thicknesses of metals. These several rays, moreover, vary in electrical qualities. It may be assumed that, as the activity incessantly passes from radio-active substances, it was much more powerful in the primeval eaHh, which has therefore had three periods : (1) excessive radio-activity, (2) medium activity, and (3) the present stage of diminished ac tivity. In addition to direct radioactivity must be taken into account at all stages the action of "decaying radioemanations." Elaborate systematic observations of the physiological effects of radio-activity have been made, and Dr. Watson finds that some of these are exceedingly suggestive when we compare the existing fauna and flora with the "dragons of the prime" and the contemporary flora of the coal-measures. Excessive radio-activity ie fatal to life, and we may reasonably infer that it prevailed while from other causes already recognised the heated sphere was unfit for the support of plant or animal. The second period, of enormous duration, in which life appeaa'ed and advanced to the stage at which giant pachyderms or thick-skinned beasts prevailed, was one in which, from recent knowledge of the effects of medium activity, it is inferred that only creatures pa-otected either by tough and thick integuments, ecaks such as clothed the big saurians, shells, or armour such as that of crustaceans could survive. Laboratory experiments in physiology make strongly for this part of Dr. Watson's system, while from the fact that animals subjected artificially to such conditions now are powerfully affected, notably in the generative function, and produce abnormally pachydermate and monstrous . offspring, suggests that the second period was fertile in new and strange forms. , In this period these queer beasts, -psychically sluggish, would be remarkably healthy and long-lived, for radio-activity not only is fatal to the micro-organisms of disease, but to toxic animal secretions, so that the nightmare animals that comparative anatomists reconstruct from fossils ran no risk from serpents, even if ophidian fangs could have penetrated their hides. Only in the third or "diminished" period, the biologist infers, would the psychical qualities ha.ye any appreciable opportu nity to develop. It seems a pity thai the age of the reign of hrain should be the one most favourable to the development of deadly microbes and animal poisons, but the doctor's data are inexorable. Ho holds that the "inhibitory" power of a layer of sea-water made the ocean habitable for animal life long before the land ; but we confess that we cannot follow him in the argument, to which he attaches much importance, of the necessity of a further inhibitory screen of dead animals on the sea-floor to protect the survivors. Perhaps the theory, like sqme of ite predecessors, is too complete ; some of the ice may not "bear," but the hypothesis is full of fruitful suggestions. Certain it is that radio-activity, especially in the world's prime, must have been a shaping factor of vast importance, which can not in the future be ignored. We'may trust the critics to fall upon the doctor's paper and worry it, tooth and nail. But we do not think they will kill. He is an original thinker, and after the manner of his kind, may carry his theory a little too far.