LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1769, 6 June 1913, Page 6

LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS.

MR. M'CABE'S LECTURE. Mr. Joseph M'Cabe delivored another ot his popular lectures in the Concert Chamber last night, tho subject for which waa "Other Worlds than Ours." Ho stated at the outset that ho proposed to j>ut before his audience tho more general and moro interesting conclusions that scientific men had reached regarding the shaping of tho Univelsc, ana tho possibilities of life on tho various bodies known in it. Two questions. had to be' answered: What was tho origin of these lights that glittered in the sky? and, Was' it possible that there were liviDg things on other globes besides our own? It was quite impossible, ho said, to give the answer to tho second question until something was ascertained as to the answer to the first. We had no positive knowledge whatever of living life in othar worlds, and any conviction we might have must be pbtained by a general deduction from knowledge of tho.Universo at large. In order, thon, to como to any conclusion, we must learn how these various worlds were made, and how far they resembled our world in constitution and material. Having come to the conclusion that they were all made in the same way, we could examine their condition and answer with some degreo of probability, whether there were living things in some other parts of tho Universe. In dealing with this question the astronomer was apt to take a view that was too narrow. The astronomer reviewed the conditions of tho planot Earth, and said that because on another globe there wero not those conditions, therefore there could be no life on it. But ho proposed to show that many living things on this planet existed under very ecoentrio conditions. First one must realise tho appalling vastness of tho Universe, and then. one must feel that there must be life in some of tho myriads of worlds in tho Universe; that it was not a huge theatre in which man alono played his little comedy for a few millions of years. Mr. M'Cabe then proceeded to answer his own questions, but first he sought to give an idea of the "appalling vastness" to which ho had jusrt referred. Ho spokO of the birth of worlds, or rather of systems, infinitely greater than our solar system, by reference to some magnificent photographic pictures of some of the greater nebulae in different stages of development. In millions of yeans the nebula compressed itself into a glowing centre, and « number of smaller bodies. These bodies cooled slowly, but tho smaller bodies became cold first, and while the centro, or sun, supplied heat, light, and electricity, tho cooled globes became habitable. He described how worlds died; how the moon had died, and how the earth would one day die, having lost all its ocean and atmosphere, and all that was necessary to support life, last of all ho "examined tho worlds we know, the planets of tho solar system, for tho planets of all the other two thousand million stars in tho heavens wero not visible. Ho came to th(v conclusion that tho only planet that was probably now habitable besides Earth was Mars. This was all that could be said. Of positive ovidenco of life on Mars there was nono. Last of all, lifo was an episodo in worlds, and when our sun had died, others of tho bodies in the heavens would take up tho story, and the story of life would _go on from world to world, until it passed from tho imagination of astronomers.