THE NEW GEOMETRY

Northern Advocate, 12 June 1926, Page 6

THE NEW GEOMETRY

All straight lines are curved. Their two ends join in space to form enormous circles (says the “World Magazine,” New York). Space is not “infinite” in the sense in which, we are

used to thinking of it. The universe is therefore a closed, not an open system, and its limits cari be measured. The new geometry, on which Einstein built, and which in turn has been building anew on Einstein, is doing strange things which, we learned as youngsters in high school, according to Prof. James Pierpont, of Yale University. But though the old-fashioned straight line, which Euclid invented 2200 years ago to explain his geometrical ideas, must now go out of style, the new Einsteinian straight line, Professor Pierpont insists, is I straight in a real sense—straight as regards the actual world of things, and not imaginary space in which [no matter or energy exists, for the [new straight line actually measures the shortest distance between two points that can bo obtained and measured in a universe full of suns and planets and masses of eleetreity all pulling and pushing and hauling to warp space “out of shape.” And though its two ends do meet, thus making the Einsteinian straight line into what Euclid would have called a circle, the circle is so vast that any part of it measured on earth will still appear straight, even in the oldfashioned sense. Prof. Pierpont gave its circumference as eighteen , quintillions of miles, in round numbers. A geometry that deals in such vast magnitudes as this, it was suggested, might appropriately demand a new name, for the old geometry meant literally “earth measurement,” and was invented in the first place to help j land surveyors. This world-measuring system might well be called “cos-1 mometry. ”