MEASURING THE UNIVERSE.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17112, 6 April 1921, Page 11

MEASURING THE UNIVERSE.

! '""'.. STARTLING THEOBY. Professor Einstein, whose .theories about light and gravitation caused a. great stir last year, has just startled the scientific world again by suggesting that the universe is finite, and that its size may be estimated.- ' He. lias ooino to this conclusion in the course ol working out further re'•■■siilts of his relativity theory. By applying his theory to the spceda, v at which the stars, are tra*elli«sj;Jhrough space, and comparing the actual volow ties as measured with those worked out by calculation, it appeared to him that gravitation at ..great distances was less than it should ho according to tho laws of Newton. '.-•' i ■ i'rom this result, by a very abstruse system of reasoning, he. maintains that it can bo proved that tho universe is not unlimited in sizo, and, further, that its actual--sizo can be estimated approximately. It has always been' one of tho wonders of astronomy that it dealt with that which is infinite. The writer of the Book of Job, when speaking of the marvels of the universe, asks, "Who hath laid the measures thereof, or who hath "stretched the line upon it?"— an Eastern way of asking, "Who h«t been able to measure it as a man measures a field with a lmeP" ! If tho Einstein theory is riglit some of tho wonders' of the universe will have gone; but other scientists will no doubt - have something to say about claim of tho.--professor. The questions dealt with are so difficult and mathematical that only highly trained experts are ablo to follow the reasoning, although' even "boys and girls may understand the results which the professor claims to have arrived at. A universe that is infinite h a wonder almost beyond the imagination, but a universe tliat is finite is even more difficult to understand, for we may well nsk, if the universe of stars and suns all around~ us has an actual eliding, what lies beyond it.