STELLAR PEOPLES

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 April 1932, Page 5

STELLAR PEOPLES

FAR SUPERIOR TO MANKIND NEW YORK, February 21. A universe containing millions of worlds, some dead and others inhabited by beings far superior to mankind, is envisioned by Dr. William MacMillan, Professor of Mathematical Astronomy. He made the announcement in speaking of his new theory of cosmogony yesterday at the University of Chicago. His view is in strong contrast with the theory of Sir A. S. Eddington and Sir James jeans, who hold that the universe is gradually wearing itself down to become an inert mass, formless and lifeless. Dr. MacMillan pictures a universe infinite in time and space, and pervaded by a fine structure of unknown composition, which diffuses energy amidst all forms of matter, a universe composed in its simplest form of energy and matter —not created out of nothing, but existing always. He conceives that beyond the lately, discovered super-galaxies of stars are endless successions of other stellar systems, and that within the electron are also endless successions of other systems, the complexities of which may never be known. He says: “Out in the heavens, perhaps, are civilisations as far above us as we are above the single cell, since they are so much older than ours. Magnificent forms of life have grown up over magnificent stretches of time, only to per-

;ish in some cataclysm. Magnificent ' forms of life will always grow up if this theory be true, that the universe is continually being rebuilt at some unknown sub-electronic level.”