IS MAN DOOMED?

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 November 1931, Page 9

IS MAN DOOMED?

WHEN THE SUN COOLS. , Whether life on the world will eventually perish :in a universal “heat death”; when lying is justified; why scandal-mongering is wrong; the morality of animals; and the fallibility of the Bible—these were among the many questions discussed at the Modern Churchmen’s Conference at Oxford recently. Sir Francis Younghusband declared that, while there was much to be said for the scientist’s theory that physics and chemistry would have the last word on tfhe future of life, it was not at all certain that the end of the world would come with the inevitable cooling of the sun. “For millions of years before any life appeared on this earth, physics and chemistry had it all their own way,” ho said. “There was, or seemed to be, nothing but chemical compounds, acting in accordance with physical laws. “In a certain number of thousands of millions of years hence, it is held, the sun will have radiateed away its heat. The earth will have become unfit for human or any living habitation, and all life and love and beauty, and every other lovely thing for which we have most ardently striven will have vanished from this planet as a light extinguished. UNIVERSE RUNNING DOWN .? “We are told by the astronomers that the universe is running down. The second law of thermo-dynamics—which lays down that heat radiated away is never recovered —is their god. Slowly but surely, they believe, the heat of the sun and the stars will be radiated away. There will be one vast, ‘heat death.’ “We living beings are like Polar bears on an iceberg, drifting south-

ward. Inevitably we must go under. “But against this running-down view of the universe, philosophers, and even some physicists, contend that the second law of thermo-dynamics, though applicable generally, may not be applisablo universally. In the deep recesses of space, under conditions as yet unknown, radiation may be reconstituted and matter may be reborn. “The evidence of any such windingup of the running down universe is not yet forthcoming, but it may come. Sir Oliver Lodge and Prof. Millikin think it will. And that it should eventually be forthcoming is in accordance with all else we know about the universe—a one-way running down process, from some problematical beginning, is so much at variance with the course of things we see elsewhere, that we suspect somewhere a flaw in the argument. “Is it likely that, without any external influence and without any internal urge from something more than physical and chemical forces, there could possibly have arisen anything with such marvellous capacities as life, with, in its turn, capacities for that still more wonderful thing—love? “For the very reason that life appeared here, we may assume that it is appearing in other parts of the universe, and will be appearing long after it has ceased to exist here. The universe is alive—it always has been and always will be.”