MIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 616, 15 March 1921, Page 5

MIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 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 resources of calculation to bear upon the problem, and is able to tell us that Laplace’s nebular hypothesis, which 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 astronomerlias now a fairly definite idea of the course of stellar evolution and decay, and will point to this and that nebular and star and star cluster as 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 hqs 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 saia that all previous inferences as to the limitations of the sidereal system had been discredited, and that in spite of the wonderful instrumental advances, knowledge of the exact from and extent of the universe seemed less attainable than in the first half of the nineteenth century.

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 the various stages of which legible records remain in the rocks ai d in the skies. It may be laid down as a general principle that each generation since 1845 lias felt obliged to thiow 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 6000 years old, and to set a date for its creation little if any less absurdly definite than the celebrated statement of the satirist to the effect that it took place at 10 a.m. on lAiday, March 16, in the year 4004 B.C. To-day it is quite out of the question to lay down anything approaching a definite consensus of opinion as to the age of the universe; figures ranging From a hundred million to n billion years are laid down as the lower limit, and there really does not seem to be much that can be sahl definitely on the subject, except that subject to correction by Professor Einstein, eternity is_ a long, longtime, and that the universe was doubtless used the best part of it in coming to its present condition.