DATE OF THE END OF THE WORLD.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2560, 30 March 1887, Page 2

DATE OF THE END OF THE WORLD.

l Sir W Thompson, lecturing, at^the) Ruyul'Mtit'uticm befoi'fe 1 fashionable and scientific - forth the latest scientific theories coh*S . earning the probable origin, total I amount aud possible duration' of the I sun's beat. After ftiferWng^to-tbih thppry of Hejmlibltz, that the bud ffas - a vast gradually cooling,. but':.ag | it cooled shrinking,'and that ago—which was the effect of gravity upon ife, temperatuwjA Sir W. Thompson sai<h~Tbo total of 11 the sun's heat was to that whicW : will bo required to teep up 476,0001? pillions of millions of nullioug lnm.% every square metre—a, little more thini a. square yard—and yet the modem® dynamical, theory of heat sbowß that the aan's mass would require only-v to fall-in or contract thirty-five metres per. annum to keep up that tremendoia-energy.-At the rate, the solar radius in 2000 years' time would be about one-hundredth per cent .loss'than atpresent. A time would como wlicq-m the temperature would falljiiud it waa B thus inconceivable'that the ' sun would fl continue to emit heat sufficient to sua- iH tain existing life on the globe for more S than ten millions vcais,Applying theg same principles retrospectiv ely, theyffl could not suppose that ■ the sun ' had* existed for more than twenty's million years—no .matter what might 8 have been its origin—whether/ itfl came info existence through the crash fl of worlds pre-existing or of the diffusedffl nebulous matter. There' was a greatH clinging by geologists and biologists to JB vastly longer periods, but treated it as a dynamic quested -with H calculablo elements, could, come"to no H other conclusion materially,- differentjß from what he had ; l 6tated.h ! WjHj Thompson, who owed his knigh'thoodßß to the share he had in the layingof thm Atlantic cable,: is ono of the-: ! mo|t? disW tinguished physicists of our time' -Popfß ularly he is best known for his ingenious'! theory of ; the origin of life in ; this:platetw which he set in. his -iuaugral: adiiW aa 8 President uf v ,.tjio British Afisboistiouiß in 1861,. vibe vital genn fl wbioh* a 11,.: else | might; fe-'suggestedy have beepbroughfflj to this' an; ty tho-breakup of HnotherHworld thatn has liappened.on a collision in Bjia(^ r , : He i« anL.lliffi / #;Dffeijnfl CambrigeandKdinb.urgh, ; and. bJiIH of :F.R.S; {of Xc;id|l jadH Edmburgi), : and Professor Ot Natural® Philoßopby;i|i. the Glasgow Although';,-- most -famous for lye A i D tk B i» 3 now Bixty ; three iyefijß; havingffl • fl