SCIENCE & INVENTION.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1948, 3 January 1914, Page 13

SCIENCE & INVENTION.

INTERMINGLING UNI\ERSLS. I KEEPING THE TIME TOlt EUROPE. It is ten years since ProsessorJKapjj teyn, of Gron'ingen, .first iornr to' the theory that the stellar universe ! 'c;oii- i! sists of two streams of stars, and in an essay which he has just written,die: has striven to put into easily intelligible;! words a summary of all that tion and observation have;done..'sineo;i then to enlarge or qualify tho. concep-; tion. His own idea, developed from' tho ton years' observations, which., are so largely duo to the American' observatories, is that our universe of; stars is not a single unit in which tho two; star-streams have been set up .by-., the; mutual attractions of tho stars,&but. that it is made up of tho meeting and-'' intermingling of two clouds - of stars';]' two universes originally separate,'i.bt;' which one is older than the other. .-But before proceeding to any attempt-..; to explain the considerations on which''! Kapteyn's idea is based . (says" an English exchange), wo may begin, with the passage with which at tho .end. of his essay he disclaims any finality in his hypotheses. It has been his aim, 1 ' ho savs, to show not that much, has" been done, but that a few pathways'; aro being mapped out along which we may direct a hopeful attack. "Our problems take a more definite form, and though wo wero ncvor able to solve them completely, let us remember the words of the poet: 'If God held in His right hand all truth, and in His left nothing, but tho ever ardent desire for truth— even with the condition that I should err for over—and bade me choose, I would bow down to His left hand, saying, "Oh, Father, give inc that. .- Absolute truth can bo but for .. Tlice alone." ' " ' Tho Material of Stars. Each star of; tho two clouds of stars has, or may have, its own propor motion. If it were otherwise, and the stars wero at rest 'within tho clouds, then they would have no other motion than that of the clouds themselves, and wo should see all the stars of the sky moving in two great streams, the members oi each stream moving in perfectly parallel lines, with perfectly equal velocity, tho two streams making from this earth's viewpoint an angle of about 100 degrees. If there were internal motions of the-stars within tho clouds we should not, however, see this. These internal motions will destroy the perfect parallelism and perfect equality, so' that what really is seen is that tho stars move only preferentially in two directions, milking an angle of about 100 degrees with each other. Small deviations from thece preferential directions aro frequent, greater deviations are much rarer, vor.v groat deviations are exceptional. From this large generalisation, which emerged in 1904, obscrration has since proceeded to establish the fact that tlie two great streams arc built up of partial streams, and that these partial streams have slightly hut still distinctly different motions. Joined with this fact, and intimately associated- with the explanations of it, is Campbell's discovery that the older the stars the greater their internal velocity in the stream along which they move. A young star we will call without further justification a helium star, ft passes by evolution into older typos of stars, and theso all move, faster, as. ill tlio course of aeons of time they become subjected to the accelerated movciiraM A?. eir or distant neighbours--in.-the slues. Hut the newly-born helium stars have little velocity. It follows that from whatever matter they may have been evolved, that kind of matter must in all probability. have had still smaller internal motion. Let us call this matter "primordial matter." Since the internal velocity of these young helium stars at already so very small we come to the conclusion that primordial matter must havo had practically no other motion than tlio motion of tho cloud to which it belongs. What traces arc there of this primordial matter? We naturally turn to the nebulae to seek it. But the nebulae during recent years have rather fallen from their placo in astronomic estimation as providing the raw material of stars; and the scanty observations collected .concerning tiiem-do notat first sight agree with Kapteyn's speculation that they ought to have tho same direction and motion as the helium stars. But that is because, with one exception, they aro the wrong kind of nebula —planetary nebulae, whose place is at the end of the series of evolution rather than at tho beginning. But the one exception—the Orion nebula—whici is most like our idea of primordial matter, turns out to have the same radial velocity as the first, stream helium stars. That is, it has exactly the motion we should expect if it were the birthplace of stars. Too much must not be made of this one instance; but it does fit ill with other facts, and tho inference from it may ho presently confirmed by observation of other nebulae. Professor Kaptcyu suggests that one of tho two great clouds of the universe is older than the other and has been swept of its primordial matter, or gaseous nebulae.

Europe's Time Signaller. Little did M. Eiffel suspect the use to which his tower was destined to be put. It is noiv one of the timekeepers of Europe, and has lately taken on itself some of the functions of a news agent. Lest we should be suspected of exaggeration, let us hasten to sny that the news it disseminates is of a strictly censored character, and is wirelessly dispatched from. tho Eiffel Towt-r at seven o'clock each morning and at eight, o'clock each evening for th® informa tion of French warships and of the military posts in Morocco. Still, here evidently is tho beginning of a morning and an evening newspaper service which next century—or even next generation P —will be common all tho world over. This, however, is far from being the sum of tho Tower's wireless activities, as may be seen from the new manual of tho Eiffel wireless sendee just issued in Paris. As all know, this station was chosen by an International Conference in 1912 to signal tho hour to the rest of Europe. This is done at a number of fixed times, and the sig nals themselves are of two kinds—thf first of which aro "ordinary" hourly signals, exact to a quarter of a sec ond, and destined for tho usages of daily life or the needs of navigators: and tlio second of which, exact, to tho hundredth of a second, furnish the mean timo accordinp to the Observatory of Paris to the scientific observatories of other countries.

Apart from theso hourly signals thcro aro a number of signals connected with tho meteorological service. Theso signals are of two kinds, the- first of them affording an indication of the barometric situation of Europe as a whole, and derived from information supplied by Iceland, Ireland, France, Spain, the Azores, and America; r the second of them sending out similar information regarding the state of tlu weather for fourteen stations in West-' em and mid-Europe, from Stoniowa; to Rome, from Prague to Biarritz and Stockholm. These telegrams arc t,f, course all coded, and numerals- are employed to convey intelligence con corning tho strength and direction of; the wind, the state of the sky, and tin state of tho sea. The state of tho sea ranges from 0 to 9 through the following stages:—Calme, tres belle, belle, pen agitce, agit-ee, houlcuse, tres houlouse, urossoi tres grosee, ami furieunoi » classification which in its earlier atagoa romiada one si. that

v.-jiicb; i.-i spxr.pt iijios- (Miipioyfcl !o iir.iflo I fore;*' of. tin; .wintii | reckoned' rmij<hjy ; ..in ynrds~.;scepnd,; | v S'ji Isb .uii io ( r 1 c:i 1 ivi?l i,tW'2 rv/I :y-l <:! Vf I> ] f>. il ill irt?y m;oc iw y' : *'': J'UCt <f; ■!'ss] ;jiio(l(yi'atflj})ro(^p|jG : finally'- inpr<?i th'an.' 10- -t]<nii Mountain Heights. .vf^.Tii'obribly^fciv^j^opl^^coultlf.fKa h:t1111. T.i■ i-'*rclativis :hei,';iiU./of. more' than • flia I" rositW moiln lains J'; .'.; I i n t.jji olibilvves li.-jli a vc?- I o rjjo.ttoi i < t li njb.j'thci .!ii;dii'si <il ihoin hll- is .Mount-; Everest,.-j-.in the Hiisiaiayas. ICvou -in. J liinj region' !.'t!icre'';isfa v ;^!Ki;f}!pa!f : >nf aliaut. tlm'iioijjlits. oi'i.peaks iii t!ie-iioi:?b-bouriiood,' ami-tiio peaksMheiiiselves are j Identified by tetters ami,numbers rather i;li]an : i "van. •Dcihit ■ has,' hoirovorf/siiggostctljaiiothcr. 'way: : o f" co ni pa rii ig s-1 1 lio V lipi g 11 1 s «yo f. I "greater']no«ntaihs,\whiohYiSfto'ro9 asUl ! o I ihom : not from j .latitude, but from ,the centro" of tho j oartli.'_ Ho has; had' i.ho."i)ati< nee thus. rto ■■ calculatoHli(?.;/yfocGntric}r',altitutk''-.bf I tbirtyM)no»ofv'thof',highcßt|^'m6untain«. rOiving' .t<i'' bulges i'nv.'i.rds' the. -.Equator . ami. if ..flattened at - i lie Poles, . a':,ns;mbor .of ; iii-ifixpectcd take,' place ; in'-'tiic • hierarchy. '..ofi-inoiintains'rc--- Thus tlio chiei'-of them ali . is. 'no .. ' longer Everest,'; which* has >; to,;;;t-ako a" modest, .plaeo on :; tlio' list.-; but' : ,Ghinibora.2x>,'': in: the' Andes.';', Chimoorazb v is 2000' metres, 'or about a miio and a qiiartcr. ; .higlier—-■ I '-or. at any rafo.farther-.from'the.;cartn s j centrcr-than! its-rival' of■ : ; k