Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1911 — NEW IN ASTRONOMY [ARTICLE]

NEW IN ASTRONOMY

Prof. McMillan of Chicago University Doubts Nebular Theory. If One Could Throw Baseball Hard Enough It Would Never Touch Earth—Sun Must Eventually Exhaust Its Energy. Kansas City. Mo. —Could you stand on top of a high building and throw a baseball around the earth? Certainly, says William Duncan McMillan, professor of astronomy In the University of Chicago, “if you throw it hard enough. “The moon,” he said, “is falling toward the earth at the rate of one-twen-tieth of an inch a second, and the earth is falling toward the sun at the rate of one-eighth of an inch every 19 miles. But the moon never will fall Into the earth and the earth never will* fall into the sun. ‘ The reason is that while the tearth Is falling toward the sun, at the same time it is falling outward from it sufficiently to keep the same relative distance. If you stand on top of a high building and drop a baseball it will travel to the ground in a straight line. But If you throw it outward it will reach the ground in a curve, and the farther you throw it the greater will be the arc it will describe. If you should throw it far enough it wouldn’t strike the ground at all, but would continue in a curve all around the earth and come back to your hand. That Is what the earth is doing—it is being thrown around the ! sun every 24 hours and never strikes ! It." I Astronomy, the oldest and most exact science, nevertheless, is discovering something new all the time. Prof. McMillan asserts. Great progress has been made eyen in the last ten

years. j "Most of what we know about the stars,” he said, "we have learned quite j recently. We know them now as well as though we had scratched them with a nail. We have reached a point where we almost are ready to reject the nebular theory of the creation of the universe. We know more about the sun than we ever did. The only thing about that the science of astronomy has not outgrown is. the Newtonian law of gravity—that remains and never j can be changed. Mathematically, as- ; tronomy has reached a high point of | exactness. Astronomy is the mother j of mathematics; it has pushed the j mathematicians forward to every *trl- ! umph they ever achieved,” i “Could the mathematicians construct a new solar system that would work as well as the present one?" Prof. McMillan was asked. —■ “On no other theory that mathematics ever could evolve would the solar system work," he said. “Change it a hair’s breath, and there would be a i wreck on the main line past all un- : tangling. That does not mean that, l perfect as it is. the solar system will I go on forever. It will not There is no such thing as perpetual motion, and some time our universe as we know It i will cease to exist. The sun has been j pouring forth its tremendous light and heat for five hundred million years. I Enormous as that reservoir of energy is. it mu6t eventually exhaust Itself. When it does life on the planets must cease." “About when will that happen, professor?” “O say in twenty or thirty million years. It isn’t anything new for a sun to go out The sky is full of extinct suns. ’ “Is it true that the moon came out of the Pacific ocean? People out in California say you can see the edges where it was broken off." .-“Well, it’s possible, but more likely the moon, the earth ail the planets were born of a tremendous collision between our sun and another sun. You i can see that there would be sparks fly-

ing In such a smash. Well, our earth is one of the sparks.” "Could such a collision happen again?” “It could, if the other sun were big enough to stand the heat. Otherwise it would be consumed before it reached our luminary. If a column of Ice 40 miles in diameter and as many million miles long, as you choose to make It were projected at our sun at a velocity of two hundred thousand miles a second, It never would get there—the sun would melt it. So you see anybody that reaches the sun must be able to stand the racket, so to speak. "This collision theory is the basis of the new hypothesis of the creation of our universe; that is displacing the nebular theory. Acordlng to the new theory the earth never was a molten mass. It was built cold. In the beginning—r am talking humanly now, in astronomy there is no beginning and no end—in the beginning the earth was a relatively small fragment, and its growth has been due to the accretions of meteoric matter. For millions of years this matter has been falling on the earth, and is falling today. The heat in the center of the earth simply is caused by the compression of the outer mass which sets up friction.” “If there is no end to matter why should the sun go out?” “The sun is nothing except a reservoir of energy, .and it is sending It out and taking none in. I do not say that this energy is ending, It still will be in the universe, but no longer In the sun, and when it ceases to come from the sun that will be the end of the earth so far as life is concerned. The universe will keep on, only we won’t be here.”