30,000,000 UNIVERSES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18831, 20 March 1931, Page 2

30,000,000 UNIVERSES.

30,000 MILLION STARS APIECE. A group of famous astronomers and physicists at Pasadena (California), was intent upon prying off the lid of ft box of mystery in which they hope to And the secret of the universe. Literally that is as Dr Albert Einstein expressed It in an announcement yesterday that swept the old Etnstelnian universe into oblivion and erected a new concept in its place. No longer does Dr Einstein believe in a symmetrical, spherical universe Such a thing is not possible under his new unified field theory. The evolution of the theory was explained in detail by Dr Einstein, step by step equation by equation, which resulted in the final equation, embracing one general law that covers the phenomena of gravitation and electro-magnetism and offers a clue to the mystery of the I structure of space. [ Then Dr Einstein told his fellow I natural scientists that he presented ! the unified field equation as a closed I box, and that he knew of no methods of investigation by direct or physical experimental means of prying off the the lid to see what was within. Dr Walter S. Adams, director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Mt. Wilson Observatory announced that he and his associates hoped to have the cover off the box soon. Dr Adams made astronomical observations establishing proof of Dr Einstein’s relativity theory. Two Californian scientists caused Dr Einstein to change his mind. They are Dr Edwin P. Hubble, and Dr Richard Chace Tolman. Dr Hubble sits at the turret of the world’s largest telescope and has bared secrets of the island universes or distant nebulae.

These are great universes like that in which the world and some 30,000,000 stars move. There are 30,000,000 such other universes, all making the major universe. Some of these have been observed 300,000,000 light years distant.

Dr Tolman. companion of Dr Hubble is a physicist. He has taken Dr Hubble's observations and evolved the theory that the major universe is expanding with explosive force and is being converted into energy and thus being annihilated. These two men found that neither the original Einstein concept of the universe, nor that of Dr De Sitter, Dutch astronomer and friend of Dr Einstein, could fit the case. Dr Einstein’s old concept was that matter determined the amount of space in the universe, and Dr De Sitter figured that matter was infinitesimal and space was the controlling element. Both conceived a static or fixed universe. That a solution is not far distant was the hope expressed by Dr Tolman in a dinner honouring Dr Einstein. He told of the philosophical physical and mathematical steps taken by Dr Einstein on his 25-year journey toward a solution of the problem of the structure of the universe.

“We have been greatly privileged to walk with him for a few steps on this journey and to look forward with confidence and joyous anticipation to his arrival at the journey’s end," said Dr Tolman.

A gasp of astonishment swept through the library of the Mt. Wilson Carnegie Institution of Washington laboratory when the Berlin professor with a few simple words made this revelation. “Regardless of what field equations are used, space never can be anything similar to the old symmetrical spherical space theory," the professor said with a smile in closing an hour and a half talk on his new unified field theory.