THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE

Evening Star, Issue 20322, 2 November 1929, Page 23

THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE

AN ASTRONOMER'S VISION A WONDERFUL BOOK Take a postage stamp and stick it on a penny. Now climb Cleopatra’s Needle and lay the penny Hat, TJostage stamp uppermost, on , top ot the obelisk. The height of the whole structure may be taken to represent the time that has elapsed since the earth was born. On this scale the thickness of the penny and postage stamp together represents ■ the time that man has lived on the earth. The thickness of the postage stamp represents the time he has been civilised, the thickness of the penny representing the time he lived in an uncivilised state. Now stick another postage stamp on top of the first to represent the next 5 000 years of civilisation, and keep sticking on postage stamps until you have a pile as high as Mont Blanc. , . the first postage stamp represents what man has already achieved; the pile which outtops Mont Blanc represents what he may achieve, if his future achievement is iproportional to his time on earth. As inhabitants of the earth wo are living at tho very beginning ox tlm®. We have come into being m the fresh glory of the dawn, MicLa day of almost unthinkable lengtn stretches before us, with unimaginable opportunities for accomplish-ment,—-Sir James Jeans, F.R.8., in ‘The Universe Around Us.’ Sir James. Jeans is not only one of our leading mathematical astronomer's (says ‘The Times’), but an eloquent writer, who has produced a wonderful book for “the plain man.” He has given not merely a readable but a fascinating account of the rapid advances rendered possible by the advent of photography into astronomical observation, an aid of such overwhelming importance that twentieth century astronomy consists of nothing but landmarks: the slow, arduous methods of conquest of the nineteenth century have given place to a sort of gold-rusli in which claim are staked out, the surface scratched, the more conspicuous nuggets collected, and the excavation adbandoned for something more promising, all with such rapidity _ that any attempt to describe the position is out of date almost before it can be printed. Step into the Time Machine. Press the button. Journey forward into tne future for a million years, and then onward and onward through tho fleeting centuries until a million million years have passed (says an ‘ Evening News’ reviewer, who has obviously revelled in the book). Then stop. Jump down from your seat on the Time Machine, and look around at the strange, nightmarish world about you, and its strange cities —at the level plains which stretch where the mountains once stood, and tho frozen seas where the waves once murmured and the queer, bored men and women who are the far-off descendants of the people of 1929. In tho sky hangs a colder sun. Below' your feet is a colder earth. For you are walking in a world which is imperceptibly but surely freezing mankind into death. And though mankind, after a million million years, is wiser than we can dream of, it can do nothing against that remorseless march of doom. ... THE WORLD-AS-IT-WILL-BE, This is no fanciful picture of the future. It is the stark truth, which science quite unemotionally lays before us. It is the picture of the world-as-it-will-be, drawn in his new book by Sir James Jeans, the astronomer, who has been acclaimed by his fellow-scien-tists as one of the few geniuses of the age. He himself, in his hook, takes that imaginary voyage through time, and, as he considers the world of a million million years’ time, he says: “I am glad that my life has not fallen in this far distant future.” He tells us that in the world of the future—a world which will be 86deg colder than the earth of to-day—moun-ains and seas will exist only as traditions handed down from a remote and almost incredible past. “ The denudation of a million million years will have reduced the mountains almost to plains, while seas and rivers will be frozen packs of solid ice. We may well imagine that man will have infinitely more knowledge than now, but he will no longer know the thrill of pleasure of the pioneer who opens up new realms of knowledge. Disease, and perhaps death, will have been con quered. ... Life will be more of a routine and less of an adventure than now; it will also be more purposeless when the human race knows that within a measurable space of time it must face extinction, and the eternal destruction of all its hopes, endeavours, and achievements. . . .

“Looked at in terms of space, the message of astronomy is at best one of melancholy grandeur and oppressive vastness. Looked at in terms of time it becomes one of almost endless possibility and hope. As denizens of the universe we may bo living near its end rather than its beginning; for it seems likely that most of the universe had melted away into radiation before wo appeared on the scene. But as inhabitants of the earth, we are living at the very beginning of time. “ Our descendants of far-olf ages, looking down this long vista of time from the other end, will see our present age as the misty morning of the world’s history; our contemporaries of to-day will appear as dim heroic figures who fought their way through jungles of ignorance, error, and superstition to discover truth, to learn how to harness the forces of nature, and to make a world worthy for mankind to live in. “ We are still too much engulfed in the greyness of the morning mists to be able to imagine, however vaguely, how this world of ours will appear to those who will come after us and see it in the full light of day. But by what light we have, we seem to discern that the main message of astronoy is one of hope to the race and of responsibility to the individual—of responsibility because wo are drawing plans and laving foundations for a longer future than we can well imagine. THE MEANING OF THIS LITE. “Wo can still only guess as to the meaning of this life, which, to all appearances, is so rare,” concludes

this great astronomer. “Is it the final climax towards which the whole creation moves, for which the millions of millions of years of transformation of matter in uninhabited stars and nebula;, and of the waste of radiation in desert space, have been only an incredibly extravagant preparation? “Or is it a mere accidental and possibly quite unimportant by-product of natural processes, which have some other and more stupendous end in view? Or, to glance at a still more modest line of thought, must we regard it as something of the nature of a disease, which aft'ects matter in its old ago? ... “ Or, throwing humility aside, shall wo venture to imagine that it is the only reality, which creates, instead of being created by, the colossal masses of the stars and nebula;? ” And when life on this earth of ours is snuffed out like a candle, and the world revolves cold and dead—what then? , Sooner or later the active life of the universe will cease, and death will reign throughout infinite space (adds the ‘Evening News ’ reviewer). Sir James speaks of this strange vision of everlasting death in a moving uassage: “ If this conjecture should Drove to lie sound, not only the atoms which provide stellar light and heat, hut also every atom in the universe are_ doomed to destruction, and must in time dissolve away in radiation. The solid earth and the eternal hills will melt away as surely, although not as rapidly, as the stars. The cloud-caped towers, the gorgeous pJtlflCGSj Th° solemn temples, the great globe itself, ' Yea. all which it inherit shall dissolve, And . . . leave not a rack be- > hind. “ And if the universe amounts to nothing more than this, s’’'dl we carry on *he quotation: We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. “Or shall we not?”