RIDDLES OF UNIVERSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 9

RIDDLES OF UNIVERSE.

WHEN SCIENTISTS DISAGREE. " SUPER-EINSTEIN " THEORY. A. and N.Z. NEW YORK, Dec. 30. Dr. Charles E. St. John, a well-known solar physicist, speaking at the Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is being held at Kansas City, Missouri, declared that the world was on the t*.reshold of tho establishment of a super-Einstein theory, which would be as startling as the Einstein theory was as compared with the previously accepted views. Dr. St. John, following Dr. Dayton Miller's claim to have disproved the first part of the Einstein theory, announced today that experiments that ho had conducted at Mount Wilson simultaneously with Dr. Miller gave results strictly according to Einstein's views, thus tending to uphold the theory. Dr. Miller and Dr. St. John, who are close friends, were asked how they reconciled the wide difference in the results of their experiments. Dr. St. John replied: " I do not believe that the results c3n be reconciled either on the basis of the Einstein theory or by throwing the theory overboard. I believe that the solution will come in a new theory which will start with the Einstein theory, and go farther. There is no reason for believing that the Einstein theory is the final thing in oar concept of the universe. " Science is faced to-day with another conflict just as big as that between my results and Dr. Miller's. It is over the nature of light. One set of experiments shows conclusively that light consists of waves; another set shows equally conclusively that light is composed of particles known as ' quanta.' Now, light cannot consist of both; therefore it must be that there is some truth in each concept, and the world must wait until genius combines them into the correct view. A similar reconciliation is possible between the Einstein theory and Dr. Miller's findings."