THE END OF THE WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2423, 11 February 1909, Page 2

THE END OF THE WORLD.

THE DATE FIXED! Reasoning from the principles of the prottv generally accepted nebular hypothesis, the end of the world is to be reached very gradually through the increasing' reign of cold and the. lengthening of the earth’s day (says (‘Science - Siftings”). For it is evident that the sun cannot keep on radiating heat at the present rate, or, indeed, at any rate, for ever. As Lord Kelvin well said, we know that the sun is cooling off, and in time will become a cold and lifeless object. If things continue to go on as they now do, astronomers tell us, according to the latest, computation, the sun will lose its life-giving heat long before 12,000,000 years have elapsed. Like all other cooling bodies, the sun must, he diminishing in size. Its diameter •must he contracting. Newcomb estimates that iii lesis-than 5,000,000 years the sun’s diameter will contract to one-half its present length, so that the sun will occupy only one-eighth of the space it now occupies. It is hardly possible for it after that to continue to furnish, as much heat as it does now. but. it must then cool off with great rapidity. This reasoning is based on the supposition that the sun is not yet a solid body, hut is so hot that its mass is still in a gaseous state. But so long as the nucleus of the sun continues to bo gaseous it will continue to grow hotter as it diminishes in size. So soon, however, as it loses sufficient heat to allow the material to take on the solid form, a crust will be formed and the radiating heat will rapidly diminish. Probably, also, the heat radiated will diminish long before that time, even though the sun is growing hotter, because of the diminishing size' of the globe. The only way that the astronomers can see to avoid this slow paralysis of the sun, and so of the whole solar system, is that just proposed by Professor Langley in a sensational article depicting what would happen if a dark world iu.ov.ing at an incredible speed in space should come so near our sun that the. two would collide. In this case the original heat of the sun might he restored, but the catastrophe would practically produce such an expansion of its volume and such an increase, of its radiating power that everything on the earth would be burned up, producing about such phenomena as are described by the Apostle Peter. Indeed, the resemblance between the words of the Apostle and the theory of Professor Langley was- as striking as it was unexpected, so much so that some readers may not know from which source the following quotation is taken: —- The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall ho dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works therein shall be. burned up. But the suggestion of the astronomer was pure speculation. There are no apparent signs of any such approaching catastrophe as Dr Langley suggests as possible. At any rate, no may settle down to the conclusion that so far as astronomical forces are concorned the present order of things will not be disturbed for three or four million years.