“OUR WONDERFUL UNIVERSE”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22020, 1 August 1933, Page 14

“OUR WONDERFUL UNIVERSE”

INTERESTING ASTRONOMICAL ADDRESS An interesting address entitled "Our Wonderful Universe," was delivered in the Y.M.C.A. Hall last evening by Mir J. Garfield Anderson, principal of the South Otago High School, under the auspices of the Astronomical Branch of the Otago Institute. There was a large attendance and the lecturer was greatly assisted in his outline of the subject by an intensely interesting series of lantern slides. - Introducing his subject Mr Anderson said that the present generation had the good fortune to live through one of the most wonderful periods of the world's history. Its civilisation probably lacked the characteristics of those of earlier times, such as the permanence of the Chinese, the mysticism of the Hindu, the appreciation of, beauty of the-Greek, but it surpassed all others in.the range of its scientific discoveries which revolutionised modes of life and altered completed the human conception of the universe. It had enlarged the bounds of time and space and had revealed unsuspected beauty in the unfathomable depths of the universe. . The speaker discussed the matter in all its aspects With Special reference to molecules a!nd atoms, and said all matter was continuous. They did not know what it was made of, but science disclosed how it behaved. From matter he went on to the question of man in his relation to the. universe and stated that the age of man was 300,000 years, or 10 generations. Compared with the age and size of the earth man w.a's a comparatively recent apparition. He had really only commenced to know the earth, to burrow into ' her . depths, to burn her forests and put her waterfalls into pipes. Astronomically speaking humanity whs at the dawn of existence characterised by all the unexplored and boundless possibilities of infancy. But in his comparative infancy man had made great progress. He had estimated the size of the world by a brain wave and was now bejrinnincr to wonder whether the earth was the beginning and end of everything or where there were other earths'with other humanities. The speaker quoted Shakespeare's, " What a piece of work is man. . . . And yet what is this quintessence of'dust," and Carlyle's "Feeblest of bipeds." [ The lecturer then went on to discuss the universe, the.3ooo "visible stars, their brightness, the greatest 300,000 times brighter than the sun, the faintest one fifty-thousandth part as bright as the sun; their velocity, their colour, their size, their density, their energy, and their- distances from the ' earth. He traced the life history of the star from the nebula. The majesty of the starry heavens, he said, simply emphasised the existence of an All-designing Mind. It was said that Kepler, one of the founders of modern science, after a long study of the heavens, was amazed at the suggestion that the stars came by accident, and notwithstanding cosmic accidents they must realise that Kepler was right. There could be no accident;' nothing haphazard in any part of the universe. The universe was a manifestation of law, order, and beauty. The speaker was accorded a hearty vote of thanks for his address :