IS THE SUN A CHARLATAN?

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14820, 20 October 1920, Page 4

IS THE SUN A CHARLATAN?

Mysteries of . life and of the universe in general, from the minutest organisms inhabiting the ocean to the vast spaces of the heavens and the strange interior of suns and stars, were discussed at the opening meeting of the British Association at Cardiff lately. Is there an end to space, or does it continue away and away for ever and ever and ever? Did time and the universe ever begin, or was there always some time or other or some- kind of universe ? Can we estimate within a few million or billion years the age of the sun and the stars? These were some of the questions suggested by the entrancing discourse .of Professor A. S. Eddington, one of the youngest of our lead"ig s< jentists. who is president of the mathematical and physical science section. He talked of the internal constitution of the stars, of the sources of their light, and he put forward the theory that the great furnaces of the stars * are stoked with tho contents of broken up, or broken down, atoms, and said that if this is true it seems to bring a little nearer to fulfilment our dream of controlling this latent power for the well-being of the human race, ! or its suicide.

The professor stated that Sir Ernest Rutherford has recently been breaking down the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen in the Cavendish Laboratory- at Cambridge, and he suggested, with a touch of astronomical humor, that "what is possible in a laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun." It was a fascinating talk about the suns and stars. ' And what is a, star 1 , anyway? Professor Eddington told us that thrj>e<3 u arters of the naked-eye stars are truly and absolutely gaseous, although at first sight they are scarcely to be discriminated from dense stars like our sun. So the sun, you gather,'is only one. of many stars of a certain density of composition. Moreover, the suns are smallish affairs.

: "TJie diffused gaseous stars are' called giants," said Professor Eddington, "and the dense stars are called dwarfs. A star begins as a: giant of comparatively low temperature. It ie a _ red star. - Slowly, through ages of time, tjie giant star contracts into a dwarf, and ae the diffuse mass of this gaseous giant star contracts its temperature rises, and go it becomes a.sun." Stars and. sung are thus all stars, either giants or dwarfs, with earlier and. 1 later phases of existence. Iho earlier :or gaseous giant -stage. occupies; probably, less than half the life of the sfar'measured in time.

i us try to picture the. conditions ■insi3et a giaiit star," said Professor Eddington, arid he spolcei of their vast dimensioiis and of thear low density. ''The body o<f the star vou see! twinkling in the sky is often 1 - less dense than the air we breathe. And vet these stars, thinner than air. are often vaster than the sims, and are enormous storehouses of heat."