ACHIEVEMENTS IN SCIENCE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 8 February 1936, Page 7

ACHIEVEMENTS IN SCIENCE.

ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM UNITED STATES.

HEAT OF 12,000 DEGREES

(By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright)

Received Friday, 7.55 p.m. NE W YORK, Feb. 6,

Three scientific achievements of more than passing interest were announced from throe American universities tonight.

The physics laboratory of NorthWestern University, Chicago, announc'd the generation of a heat of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit by means of an electric arc. This is believed to bo the hottest temperature in any place in the universe and was achieved while outside the laboratory sub-zero temperatures prevailed in an unprecedented cold wave.

Harvard University indicated the identification of the double-eclipsing star, 20 Canis Majoris, which is visible to the naked eye in the southern sky under Sirius, near the constellation ot Orion, as the heaviest star in the heavens. Its diameter is 4000 times that of the earth, and it is 40,000,000 times as heavy. It is 20,000 light-years away from the earth and is composed of two giant bodies revolving about one another and hiding one another at regular intervals. Finally, at Yale University, Professor Leigh Page announced a now theory ot relativity, broadening the foundation of Einstein’s original special theory of relativity in 1905, and unlike the latter, which applied itself to the motions of celestial bodies, it applies itself to the atom and “offers hope of acquiring a better understanding of the motions occurring therein.’’ More specifically the new theory leads to the possibility of types of motion not even dreamt of by Einstein. Otherwise this theory is so intensely mathematical that it is hopeless to explain it in plain language.