STRENGTH FROM STARS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 15 May 1928, Page 2

STRENGTH FROM STARS

TO REPLACE WORLD’S WASTAGE. U.S. SCIENTIST’S THEORY. NEW YORK, March 19. The world is not fading away, doomed eventually to die through lack of heat and energy. Instead elements are born unceasingly in stars and nebulae. This startling new theory of the uni verse was advanced last night by Dr. Robert Millikan,. of 'California Institute of Technology, speaking before his associates at Pasadena. He asked that they wait further experiments before accepting his theory as fully proved, but said that his recent experiments with mysterious cosmic rays left no doubt in his mind that the process of creation was now going on ia the heavens and that .our earth was not, as had been long believed, a disintegrating planet. His investigations of cosmic rays have been conducted in high mountain lakes of 'California and Bolivia. The rays have been studied with the aid of self-recording electroscopes sent by balloons nearly' up to the full extent of the earth’s atmosphere. Dr. Millikan icrmed his measurements “announcements of the birth of elements” which were being formed continually from electrons. Explaining his theory in greater detail, he said it had long been known that all elements have a structure which shows that they are exact multiples of hydrogen. Scientists learned 30 years ago that under the process of radio activity heavier atoms were disintegrating into lighter ones. It should therefore be expected that somewhere in the universe a building-up process was going on to replace the destructive force of radio activity. He believed that his present discoveries were the first evidence of such creative process that everywhere around us, either in the stars, in nebulae or in the depths of space, creation was proceeding.