SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1939, Page 9

SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Galileo, the great Italian scientist, once told a story of a professor of philosophy who, like many others at that time, refused to believe it possible that the planet Jupiter could have four satellites; yet so afraid of changing his opinion was he that he persistently refused Galileo’s offer to let him look through the telescope and discover’ his error. I am afraid we have still got a few learned men of that sort. Sixty or 70 years ago the biologists had settled the origin of species so satisfactorily'to themselves that when Mendel announced his law, they did not like it at all, for if it is true that the variation of species is governed by a law that seems specially designed to prevent new species from originating by crossing two different varieties of the same species, what was to become of their theory of the origin of species? Disprove it they could not, so they hushed it up and Mendel’s law remained unknown for about 30 years till it was discovered a second time and therefore could be hushed up no longer. But other times other manners. A few years ago a German scientist invented an hypothesis to the effect that light is matter and therefore subject to gravitational attraction. That suited the materialists admirably, and to mark their approbation, they conferred the degree of doctor on the inventor of the proposition, who, however, frankly told them that a lot of water would run under the bridges before his hypothesis was proved. Was the story so big that there was no room for it to pass under any bridge and therefore it must have got drowned? For we have never heard of it since. A little reflection will show that if light is matter, then-it would behave like the ashes shot up from a volcano and fall back into the sun, leaving our earth in darkness and all life perishing from cold and hunger. Is it not a fortunate thing for us that the Creator is not such a fool as some men would have us believe? Now the same man is reported to be bringing out a new theory to account for gravity and the origin of the universe. Have we not got cosmogonies and theories of evolution enough already? And if this learned man believed in them, would he attempt to make new ones? All we know, and ever need know of the origin of the universe the Creator himself has told us in the first chapter of Genesis, and I should think the one who built the universe ought to be at least quite as good an authority as our learned professors. What we need to know and actually do know, is the wisdom and power displayed by God in the creation. Every contingency has been foreseen and provided for. For instance, .Mercury has to travel 29 miles a second or it would be drawn into the sun and destroyed. Our earth has to travel 18 miles a second for the same reason. The comets travel 18 miles at the distance of our earth, 40 miles a second at the distance of Mercury and very much faster still when passing the sun. In 1843 a comet turned round the sun in two hours, developing a speed of 342 miles a second. It must have passed through the flames of the sun, yet it reappeared quite unharmed. If such tremendous forces were not balanced and controlled by natural law, is it not absolutely certain that anarchy, instead of the beautiful order we see, would rule supreme? Just as it only takes a small rudder to steer the biggest ships, so it only takes one of the weakest forces —gravity, to wit —to control the tangential force and prevent it from hurling the planets and satellites into outer darkness In the case of our earth, gravity only shifts the earth about oneseventh of an inch per second While the tangential force shifts us at the rate of 18 miles a second —that is .to say the tangential force is about 8 million times greater than the gravity of the sun at our distance from it Less than that would land our earth on the sun More than that would send the earth out into outer darkness The above are only a few of the things that show how the Creator has founded the world by wisdom and maintains it by understanding—l am, etc., I HANS C. THOMSEN. Masterton, 'April 10.