ENDLESS PROCESS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 28 October 1922, Page 9

ENDLESS PROCESS.

THE UNDYING UNIVERSE,

GROWTH OF COSMIC THEORY,

I In the sense that, though individuals ! are born and die, the life of a race is of indefinite extent, it is argued by Air, A- V"i GlFord that toe universe is imI mortal, tnough suns may go cold and i stellar systems of this epocn may pass ] away. He developed the argument on a very interesting paper read before I tlie astronomical section of the Welling-' ton Philosophical Society, leading up to it by an illuminating outline of the historical development .of cosmic theories. Thousands of years ago, when man considered his habitat the centre- ! piece of creation, theories were de^ veloped that to modern views were little more than amusing. Three thousand years ago the Chinese knew the length of the year to be 365£ days^nd 2000 years ago could foretell the return of comets, but the supreme position of the earth was maintained long after that. Mr. Gifford spoke of the magnificent intellectual achievements of the Greek philosophers in their speculations about the universe, and of the abrupt transfer of this form of culture by the Arabs after the destruction of the library at Alexandria. Western philosophy then underwent an eclipsfe that lasted for about fourteen centuries; and then the Copernican theory, which for the first time: accepted the rotation ot the earth, transformed astronomical ideas completely. This was nerhans the

greatest forward step made" in the science; and Copernicus was followed by a number, of ~ great men—Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton —who closed the mathematical period and ushered in the physical. The more direct study of the universe by means, first of the telescope, and then of the spectroscope, and later of the interperometer, had enabled astronomers to discover the distances, constitution, temperature,'motion, and, in some cases, the sizes of stars which in no case could be actually~seen except as mere points of light; and Mr. Gifford mentioned in this category the names of Dolland, Fraunhofer, Kirchoff, and especially Huggins. Proceeding to the general question, the lecturer said it was hopeless to try to arrive at a complete cosmogony till men were free from errors due to their close relationship with the earth and finite conception's of time and space. It took, he said, thousands of years of enquiry and work to prove that the earth was not the centre of the universe. How long would it take to realise that this epoch was not a unique one?_ The study of earlier cosmic theories and their gradual conquest of mistaken ideas, he said, would give valuable help to modern enquirers, .whose handicaps were still of the same type as the errors of the past. - Mr. Gifford proceeded to discuss in terms of warm appreciation the "partial impact" theory of Professor "*- Bickerton as a most valuable explanation of the perpetuity of the race of i stars, showing how, though stars must' die, new ones must be born. Mr. Gif- j ford argued that in just the same way j systems of stars, by their impact, niust j equally persist, and the universe must; be immortal. The clash of stars must, be far more frequent than it would be if only the visible ones existed, because the visible stars^ must be enormously outnumbered by the dark bodies scattered throughout space, bodies which, ' having once been stars, were passing through a long period of "death." I awaiting a renewal of their activity by t collision.