WONDERS OF UNIVERSE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 2 June 1928, Page 11

WONDERS OF UNIVERSE

A STONi'SIIING figures illustrating the age of the earth, the srie of the universe, and the radiation of energy from the stars were given by Dr. .( H. Jeans, secretary of the Koyal Society, who delivered the Trueman b ood lecture before the Royal Society oi Arts in London on March 7. Among the most remarkable of his computations were the following: The life in front of the human race so enormously exceeds the life behinu it that humanity must be regarded as a three-days’ old infant who nas yet to reach three-score years and ten. So numerous are the stars m the universe tiiat the same number of grains of sands spread over England would make .a layer hundreds of yards in denth. Our earth is one-millionth part of one such grain of sand. The heaviest stars are so densely packed that a handful of their matter would weight about ten tons. Energy radiated from each square inch of the sun’s surface is sufficient to keep a 50 li.p. engine continuously in motion.

Illustrating the amount of energy made available by radiation, Dr. Jeans said that the annihilation of a pound ol coal a week would produce as much energy as the. combustion of the 5,000,000 tons a week which are mined in the British Isles. A single drop of oil would take the Mauretania .across the Atlantic. The total age of the earth far exceeding the 300,000 years or so of man s existence, it must be something like 2000 million years. “A million million years hence, so tar as we can foresee, the sun will still be much as now, .and the earth will be revolving round it much as now. The year

ENERGY OF THE STARS

will be a little longer, and the climate quite a lot colder, while the rich accumulated .stores ot coal, oil and forest will have loug been burnt up; but there is no reason why our descendant should not still people the earth. Perhaps it may be unable to support so large a population as now, and perhaps fewer will desire to . live on it. On the other hand, mankind being three million times as old as now, may—if the conjecture does not distress our pessimists t.oo much—be three million times as wise.” Radiation of energy was annihilating the sun’s mass at the rate of 250,000,(XX) tons a minute. As tne sun had no source of replenishment it must weigh 380,000,000 tons less to-day than it did yesterday. Of each ton it had at birth only a few hundredweights at most remained to-day. The radiation of the stars imposed an endlessly recurring capital levy on their masses. ■ “Thus observation and theory agree in indicating that the universe is melting away into radiation. Our position is that of Polar bears on an iceberg that has broken loose front the icepack surrounding the Pole, and is inexorably melting away as the iceberg drifts to warmer latitudes and ultimate extinction.” After describing the formation of planets as the result of the close approach of two stars, producing long streamers of gas, which ultimately eondense into “diops.” Dr Jeans said if a se.ond star had not happened to come i close to our sun there would have been no solar system. A quite unusual accident was necesLsary to produce planets, and our sun, with its- family of attendant planets, was rather of the nature of an astronomical freak.