WONDERS OF UNIVERSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 344, 3 May 1928, Page 13

WONDERS OF UNIVERSE

ENERGY OF THE STARS MANKIND STILL ONLY IN INFANCY Astonishing figures illustrating the age of the earth, the size of the universe, and the radiation of energ) from the stars were given by Dr. J. H. Jeans, secretary of the Royal Society, who delivered the Trueman Wood lecture before the Royal Society of Arts in London on March 7. Among the most remarkable of his computations were the following; The life in front of the human race so enormously exceeds the life behind it that humanity must be regarded as a three-days’ old infant who has yet to reach three-score years and ten. So numerous are the stars in the. universe that the same number of of sands spread over England would make a layer hundreds of yard-' in depth. Our earth is one-millionth part of one such grain of saua. The heaviest stars are so densely packed that a handful of their matter would weigh about ten tons. Energy radiated from each square inefl of the sun’s surface Is sufficient to keep a 50 h.p. engine continuously in motion. The Age of the Earth Illustrating the amount of energy made available by radiation. Dr. Jeans said that the annihilation of a i pound of coal a week would produce as much energy as the combustion of the 5,000,000 tons a week which are mined in the British Isles. A single drop of oil would take the Maunetania across the Atlantic.

The total age of the earth far exceeded the 300,000 years or so of man s existence; it must be something like 2,000 million years. “A million million years hence, so far as w*e can foresee, the sun will still be much as now', and the earth will be revolving round it much as now. The year will be a little longer, and the climate quite a lot colder, while the rich accumulated stores of coal, oil and forest will have long been burnt up; but there is no reason why our descendants should not still people the earth. Perhaps it may be unable to support so large a population as now, and perhaps fewer will desire to live on it. On the other hand, mankind, being three million times as old as now, may—if the conjecture does not distress our pessimists too much—be three million times as wise.” Annihilating the Sun Radiation of energy was annihilating the sun’s mass at the rate of 250,000,000 tons a minute. As the sun had no source of replenishment it must weigh 360,000,000,000 tons less to-day than it did yesterday. Of ea< h ton it had at birth only a few hundredweights at most remained to-day. The radiation of the stars imposed an end- ■ lessly recurring capital levy on their i masses. “Thus observation and theory agree in indicating that the universe is i melting away into radiation. Our posij tion is that of Polar bears on an iceberg that has broken loose from the icepack surrounding the Pole, and is inexorably melting away as the iceberg drifts to warmer latitudes and I ultimate extinction.” After describing the formation of : planets as the result of the close ap- ; proach of two stars, producing long | streamers of gas. which ultimately condense into “drops.” Dr. Jeans said i that if a second star had not happened to come close to our sun there would : have been no solar system. A quite ; unusual accident was necessary to produce planets, and our sun, with its family of attendant planets, was rather of the nature of an astronomical freak.