CREATION STILL IN PROGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 19, 22 January 1921, Page 11

CREATION STILL IN PROGRESS

ELECTRICAL THEORY OF THE

UNIVERSE

EXPLANATION OF OF

THE HEAVENS,

Professor Kristian Birkeland, the great Norwegian astronomer and electrician, who startled the scientific world a. few years ago with his announcement that the whole universe was nothing' but electrified space, and 1 with his amazing picture of the processes of creation and evolution, has constructed a. miniature universe in which he demonstrates his theories and produces at will almost all the colestial phenomena that Vhave puzzled men of science," says a writer in the Birmingham Post. !

: Do you want to see an aurora 'borealis? Professor Birkeland touches a. button, throws over a switch, and ]o and behold a miniature Northern lights appears. >'

■. Would you I'know what tha. rings of Saturn are and how they , are formed ? Another button is pressed, another /"switch thrown over, anil before your eyes you see tho strange belts of light take shape and play around the sphere that represents the planet. ' . \ Suiispots? He produces them in a moment; the zodiacal" light appears to ' order. '. • -. , The scientific world has not yet accepted all Professor Birkeland's hypotheses as proved, but it has already placed thorn to tho fore as' among the- inqßt plausible explanations of the mysteries of the heavens. It: has'long respected him as one til tho greatest authorities- on terrestrial magnetism, polar storms, and the aurora bore- ' alis. -.'. He is one of the discoverers o£ the properties of the negative or cathode electric rays which cause the brilliant light: of the vacuum tubes for which there is such a multiplicity of /Uses in the sciences and in the arts. Furthermore, it is his' process, of extracting nitrogen from ,tho air and turning it into ammonia, nitric acid, and ■ fortilisars that is in use at the groat fuctory of Notodden, Norway. Briefly stated, the theory that Dr. Birkeland is now demonstrating is this. AH tho great suns of 'the universe are powerful ■generators, poles of negative magnetism,' eternally discharging electrons into the.vast vacuum wo call' space. Some of these electrons fly'off into space never to return. What becomes of them eventually we can only, guess, but it may bo that they meet other electrons thrown off from othovistars and as eons succeed eons gradually accumulate in groups and form the whirling nebuline which condense into new stars. Others of the electrons return to the parent body, drawn by, gravitation. Yet others—and these are the ones that interest us most— coalese to form, new planets revolving about their suns, or go to strike the earth and other planets and produce thereon the phenomena of electric storms, aurora borealis,' etc. The'fascinating featurt! of this theory) if we accept it, is that creation is still going on all, around us, embryo planets, embryo I suns;. "without form and void," being conceived in space and started on their j way to develop into earths that some day l may be habitable; under it, space 1» infinite and contains an infinite • number of stars—and, so far as our finite minds can see, there is no reason why these processes should ever come to an end.

Birkeland tells us ( that wherever these swiftly moving electrons encounter rarefied gas they set up luminous phenomena. It is on some such basts as this that the tails of comets are lormod, for these are always directed 'away from the sun. There seems' littlo doubt that the waving curtains of the aurora borealis or Northern lights and the terrific eleotrio storms that make the mariner's compass go crazy in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, aro due to some such electrio force.

In his laboratory at Ohristiariia Dr. Birkcland has built his miniature universe —or that part of it we know as tho: solar system. It is under a great caso of heavy' glass into which he can introduce such gasea as he desires, and from which he can exhaust tho air and produce as near a' vacuum as is possible with human machines. Its total capacity is 74 quarts. In the: centre is suspended a globe eight centimetres (5J inches) in diameter, which Birkeland calls the "Terrell*." This is a copper sphero containing at its centre an eloctro-magnot which can 'b» excited by electric currents in such, a way _as to reproduce' on tho Terrella tho equivalent of terrestrial magnetism. On tho side of the glass case it) a metallic disc which generates electrons_ and represents tho sun. Dr. Birkqland drives electric discharge? into the interior of the glass' case, and watches tho luminous phenomena that are produced as he varies the rarefaction of' the contained gases, increases or reduces the intensity of tho eleotrio discharges, and alters the strength of magnetism in the central sphere. An extraordinary variety of light, both as to colour, form, intensity, and behaviour is observed with these changes. j . In the course of these observations Dr. Birkeland noticed that a« he veductd litts by little the intensity of the electric cur-' rent passing . through t the apparatus, the large ring tbac represented, the zodiacal light drew in trad became thinner until it formed around the equhtor of the TorrelK » circle exactly like the ringß of Saturn and composed, like these, of several zones differing in brilliance; it even contained.a dark space analogous to that described by Onrini , , Theso extraordinarily interesting fact* Jed Dr. Birkeland to make some no less interesting deductions. Saturn would appear to be, like the sun, but in less degree, a focus for the discharge of electrons, and these, directed by ths magnetiitm of the planet, produce in the rarefied gases that surround it a ring of feeble light capable of reflecting the sun's light and sending it back to us. This hypothesis is . engaging. But 'L. HouHevigue, the French astronomer, comments that we must not.jump at it too quickly juei because it {rees us from many difficulties, such as that of explaining 'the apparently eternal equilibrium of vast mutant! masses lormmg togothor a whole as fragile as it is complete,