The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GISBORNE, NOV. 18, 1906.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1931, 13 November 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GISBORNE, NOV. 18, 1906.

Yesteuday we referred to the theory of “ dissipation of energy ’’advanced by Lord Kelvin (then Sir William Thomson) many years ago, in which the great physicist reasoned out the ultimate condition of things to be absolute inertia or death throughout all space, and this theory has not until quite recently been refuted or hardly questioned, possibly because of the eminence of its author and his high attainments 'in scientific research Curiously enough theologians, who ought to have been most interested in the question, appeared to treat it with indifference, although they must have recognised two facts that should have stirred them to activity'-in opposition to the acceptance of it. One was that if the theory had a basis of truth it entirely disposed of orthodox teaching and demolished the foundation of all religious belief in an after life, for if it was true as asserted by Sir William that all energy was gradually dying down, that the force of attraction and gravitation became lesser and lesser day by day, that every force in Nature was being spent in the tremendous

energies nocossary to keep millions of worlds in motion and in binding thorn together in vast systems,-'and that there was no reserve depot from which

those enormous forces couldbo ronowed, there wrs but one logical conclusion, namely, that, all matter must ul' matoly (ind a resting point with no force left to movo anything', and that co alition could only bo doscribod as eternal death. Tho other was that this theory was mooting with very gonoml accept' unco, and the tenets of orthodoxy wore being vastly uudorm-nod. Hut still they allowed it to pat t almost if not entirely unnoticed while they railed at Darwin unstintiugly with much loss cause. Therefore, by default, as it wore, the theory bocamo tho accepted ono, and those who followed Lord Kelvin’s roasonings believed with him that tho time would come when all space would bo fillod with invisible dust, for no atom of matter could attract another, or hold on to it to form any kird of entity, and absolute stillness cf death would pervade all space, With such a condition of things staring us in tho face, it was useless to talk of “an otornal life,” and, if truo, tho wholo fabric of religious boliof became a nullity from the scientific star dpoint until an opposing thoory was advanced by a scientist whoso fame was not sufficient to gain for him a world-wide credence such as that accorded to Lord Kelvin, though tho aut.hois none other than tho tutor of tho renowned Professor Rutherford, who is known throughout the civilised world in connection with his researches with radium. Tho opposing theory or generalisation of scientific fact at onco alters the position, and although it has not yet met with acceptance in the great halls of science it has there boon examined and tested by individual experts, and men like Sir William Crookes, Sir Robert Ball, Lord Rayleigh, and others to whom it has been submitted have expressed a qualified approval, while Lord Kelvin himself was magnanimous enough to say that he “ could find no flaw in it.” Thus wo ate fairly entitled to quote its details in opposition to the hitherto accepted view, and, without any depreciation of Lord Kelvin’s status as a scientist, to advance the name of its author, Professor A. W. Bickerton, as the man who has saved orthodoxy from scientific demolition, lndoed it has come to our knowledge indirectly through Professor Rutherford that Lord Kelvin has now abandoned the “ dissipation of energy ” notion per force, no doubt, of the stronger claims of “Cosmic Impact,” which, thanks to Prof, Bickerton, its

expounder, oxplains all the difficulties of celestial phenomena and places the belief in eternal life back upon its ancient pedestal from which it will now be more difficult to remove it. To go into the whole details of this magnificent generalisation would be obviously impossible in these columns, and it must suffice here to say that the theory of “ Cosmic Impact ” satisfactorily solves “ the riddle of the universe ” and disposes of the dismal thought that universal death must supervene and be the end of all things To give a crude notion of it, however, it may be stated that the life of a world, like that of an animal, has its limits, and if there was no possibility of renewal, as Lord Kelvin supposed, there could be nothing to look forward to but universal death ; but Professor Bickerton has shown that there is not only the possibility but that it actually occurs by the impacting of two bodies whirling in space. They are drawn towards each other at tremendously increased velocity by mutual attraction, and tear pieces out of each other which are grounc into fiery dust which is left behind at or near the point of impact, while the wounded bodies resume their orbital courses altered by the force of the impact and their mutual attraction. These wounded bodies exhibit themselves as variable stars which have always beer, the puzzle of astronomers and have never been explained by any other hypothesis. The whirling mass of fiery dust left behind accords exactly with the appearance of nebulas, and as these become condensed by the attractive force of their molecules they develop into suns which in turn cool down into life-sustaining conditions when their heat is no longer radiant. But life is not possible without radiant heat from outside, and therefore the sun is ae necessary for that purpose as the world itself, hence the necessity for

rythmic systems which the law of gravitation supplies, and that law is the chief factor in the formation of new worlds, as it is in the destruction of old and useless ones. Thus it will be seen that apparent chaos reconstructs the cosmos and renews it through the never-ending ages of time. That New Zealand can claim as its own the only scientist who has shown this to be possible (though Clausius and Rankine have attempted to do so but failed and Kelvin endeavored to demonstrate its impossibility) is oomething to bo proud of; but Professor Bickerton will not livo to receive the kudos that he so richly deserves from those who profess to admire the absorbing grandeur of the works of creation, the proper study of which can alone uplift the mind of man to a just conception of the Ruler of All Things.