RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 108, 31 January 1921, Page 7

RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE

The photographic camera and the spectroscope have worked together in new attacks upon that fundamental question of the universe—whence, when, how, came the stars and the planets? The mathematical physicist too brings, new Tesourcj® of calculation to bear upon the problem, anal is able to tell us that Laplace s nebular hypothesis, whicß our grandfathers considered as absolute truth, and the crowning achievement of their cosmic science, is simply foolish, in that incandescent gas never does and never can behave in anything like the manner which this hypothesis demands, states the "Scientific American.” With this means of confining himself to physical possibilities, the astronomer has now a •fairly definite' idea of the course of stellar evolution and decay, and will point to this and that nebula and star and star cluster ae illustrations of the several stages. And where the astronomer of 75 years ago thought he was on the point! of placing dimensions to the universe, there has been a curious double overturn of opinion. Bigger telescopes and the camera so extended the visible field that no more than ten years ago a competent writer very properly said that all previous inferences as to the limitations of the sidereal system had been discredited, and that in spite of tho wonderful instrumental advances, knowledge of tho exact form and extent of the’universe seemed less attainable than in the first half of the nineteenth century. To-day, however, there is good ground for the belief that a concerted attack on the problem, with every mathematical and instrumental resource employed to the full, has at length struck bottom, and that as a tentative estimate of the extent of starry space we may set eonie such figure as 300,600 light years —which sounds mucn more impressive, though at the same time more meaningless, if we translate it into 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. The astronomer has collaborated with the geologist in estimating the time necessary for the earth and the rest of the universe to have passed through tho various stages of which legible records remain in the rocks and in the skies. It may be laid down as a general principle that each generation since 1845 has felt obliged to throw out of court, as hopelessly inadequate, the most liberal estimate that the preceding one felt justified in making. In 1845 there were plenty of people who did not feel it inconsistent with the scientific viewpoint to believe that the universe was about six thousand years old, and to set a date for its creation little if any less absurdlv definite than the celebrated statement of the satirist to the effect that it took place at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 16, in the year 4004 B.C. To-dav it is quite out of the question to lay clown anything approaching a definite consensus of opinion as to the age of the universe; figures ranging from a hundred million to a billion years are laid down' as the lower limit, and there really does not eeem to be much that can be said definitely on the subject, except that, subject to correction by Professor Einstein, eternity is a long, long time, and that the universe has doubtless used; the bast part of it in coming to its present condition.