The New Cosmology

310 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY, 1926 The New Cosmology The Hypothesis that Atoms Are Being Evolved in Interstellar Space Is Confirmed by Millikan's Analysis of the Penetrating or Cosmic Rays By William Duncan MacMillan Professor of Astronomy at the University of Chicago grandfathe ·s believed very firmly in F. R. Moulton of the department of astronomy, a significance might well be extended to include the the eosmogon:' of the book of Genesis. mathen1atician of high attainments, not only were the origin of cells, crystals, molecules, atoms and elec God made the hc·aven and the earth, the weaknesses of the nebular hypothesis subjected to trons. The origin of cells, crystals and molecules sun, the moon a1 d the stars, and all the adverse criticism, but a new hypothesis was pnt has received a great deal of attention, but there has living things th 1t inhabit the waters, forward, an hypothesis which Chamberlin called been very little discussion of the origin of atoms the land and the air, in the sp.tce of six days, resting The Planetesimal Hypothesis. and electrons. from all his labors on the sc\ cnth day; and all·this The central idea of the old cosmogony had been The tern1 "cosmology" signifies the effort to coOr occurred son1c six thousand years ago. rotational instability: rotational instability of gases dinate all of the physical processes which we can After a lifetime devoted to a mathematical study in the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; rotational detect in the visible universe, and to derive from that of the consequences of the hw of gravitation as instability of liquids in the fission theory of Poin coordination all of the inferences which logically manifested in our solar systern, Laplace was much car6 and Sir George Darwin as to the origin of .the flow from it, whether they refer to the past, the impressed, a little over one hunclred years ago, with moon. The central idea of the new cosmogony was present or the future. It represents the widest pos the uniformities that occur in the motions of the the close approach, but not collision, of two stars, sible aspect of the transformations of energy and of sun~s family of planets. Their orbits are very nearly one of \vhich was our own sun. those temporary localizations of energy which we circles; these t:ircles lie very nca:ly in one and the call the physical units-electrons, atoms, crystals, same plane, the plane of t.hc ccli\Jtic, not very far stars, and so on; for I take it that we haye all learned from the equator of the sun; and iinally, the planets the lesson that in the study of the physical units we all re,olve about the sun in th~ same directions. find nolhing but energy and organization: that solid, As far as he knew them, they rotated on their axes unorganized, little something or other which we in the same direction as they reyoJved about the thought of as "n1atter," has vanished into the realm sun, and the sun itself rotated in the same direction of mvths. with them. The satellite systems abo exhibit the In .studying the physical units, therefore, we have same uniformities. to deal on! y with energy and the properties of its Could all this harmony be a matter of accident? organization. Laplace answered with an emphatic '·No! the pres ent unifonnities in the solar svstem are evidence of Science Does Not Recognize Creation a dynamic past." And he pru'posed what has come The foundations for the study of the motions of the to be known as the Nebular Hypothes;s, celestial bodies were laid by Newton when he formu· latcd the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, Death of the Nebular Hypolhesis and developed the mathematical machinery (the After the foundations of thermodynamics had calculus) which is necessary for tracing out the con !wen laid in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, sequences of these laws. The tremendous successes Helmholz pointed out, in 135·1·, that the gravita won by the students of celestial mechanics, from tional potential energy of the contracting nebula of Newton to Poincare, have been considered by many Laplace was sufficient to furnish the sun with its as the crowning glory of the human intellect. When present rate of radiation for twenty million years, we rise, however, from the f'tudy of local systems, and that this was more than twice as long a period such as our planetary system, or binary and multiple of time as was required by the most radical of the stars, to aggregates of stars such as globular clusters PROF. T. C. CHAMBERLIN or star clouds, the number of the objects to be dealt geologists. Noted geologist of the University of Chicago who, udth Prof. Even· we of the second quarter of the Twentieth F. R. Moulton, developed the Planetesimal Hypothesis with is so great that we are compelled to resort to Century are compelled to admire the simplicity and statistical methods for such meager information as beauty of the Laplace-Helmholz idea. It coordinated It was a bold flight of the imagination, for neyer we possess. the scientific knowledge of the middle of the Nine before had contact with the outside universe been Nevertheless, thanks to Charlier and Kapteyn and teenth Century f'O harmoniously, and was so attrac l•rought seriously to our consideration. The incep many others who have followed in their lead, we tive in itself, that we are not surprised that our tion of our family of planets was bi-parental, not have a certain fund of information with respect to fathers believed in it as conftdently as our grand mono-parental as had formerly been thought. the dynamics of stellar aggregates, such as the globu· fathers had believed in their conception of the story Much study has been given to the planetesimal Jar clusters, star clouds, or even such an aggregate of creation in Genesis. It dominated the thoughts !typothesis during the quarter of a century which has of star clouds as our own galaxy, which is very of scientific Inrn during the entire century, and just elapsed, but it has stood the tests welL No precious. As might be expected a priori, the time· fmally crystallized into a dogma, so that Lord Kelvin, fatal flaws have developed. There are many difficult 'cale for these vast objects rises with the linear· in an address in 1899, stated its conclusions with a problems, to be sure; but nature very rarely places scale, so that observable changes in their inter· confidence and an authority that reminds one of the problems that are mathematically simple before us, nal organizations are to be measured in thousands 12 15 old Hebrew Prophets when they began "Thus saith just enough, perhaps, to keep us struggling forward of billions ( 10 ) or even millions of billions (10 ) the Lord." without complete discouragement. of years. For some time previously, however, the geologists Many astronomers and geologists, perhaps most One of the fundamental events in such an aggregate had been restless under the restrictions as to time of them, believe that the Planetesimal Hypothesis is the close approach of two stars. If for the sake which were imposed upon them by the nebular sketches in the large outlines of the past history of of a suitable unit we call a million billion. years hypothesis, and Lord Kelvin's address precipitated the earth and her sister planets. Filling in the an "eon," then the expectation of the sun that some a revolt. In a paper which in its insight into the details will be the work of the future. other star will approach it as close as the earth possibilities of atomic physics seems almost pro The problems of cosmogony have been a favorite does, is once in four eons, on the average. To one phetic, and which was published in Science of the theme for more than a century, but the gigantic who is accustomed to such periods of time as were same year, T. C. Chamberlin. Head of the Depart strides of the physicists and the observational astron granted by the Helmholz theory of the origin of the ment of Geology of the University of Chicago, omers for a generation past have placed before us a sun's heat such figures seem fantastic and unreal, sharply, but courteously, challenged not only the field even larger than that of cosmogony, the culti and thev were dismissed at first as such, with a conclusions of Lord Kelvin, but also the foundations vation of which I have ventured to call cosmology. feeling, . unexpressed perhaps, that the galaxy had on which those conclusions reRted. As used hitherto, the word "cosmogony" nwans the been created much more recentlv than that. Chamberlin's paper marked the beginning of a study of the origin of those forms which are visible Science, however, does not ;ecognize "creation," new era in cosmogony. Assoeiating himself with in the sky-and therefore it deals with the past. Its for it has no means of dealing with it. These vast MAY, 1926 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 311 stellar aggregates are there, before our very eyes, percent from that which has just been derived from and these vast periods of time go with them. We the electrostatic potential energy. Einstein further cannot dodge the facts, however startled we may be. remarked that, on account of the radiation of its Nor can we believe that the stars were all dark and energy, the mass of the sun was declining at the cold until a hundred million years, or so, ago, when rate just mentioned.

Load more