Bickerton. — On the Immortality of the Cosmos. 541 



the sun is a characteristic instance of this. The comet is a 

 few days near the sun at high velocity, then it remains for 

 longer and longer periods at lessened velocity, getting slower 

 and slower, until it is beyond the sun's effective gravitation. 

 Therefore gaseous molecules distant from gravitation, as a 

 rule, are moving slowly. But slowly-moving gas is cold, — 

 colder than the solid dust of space, — and any of this gas 

 coming in contact with cosmic dust will be warmed by this 

 dust, and, heat being molecular motion, will bound off with 

 renewed velocity, to be again exhausted only (in the absence 

 of contact with other matter) by doing work against gravita- 

 tion, and so passing to rarer portions of space, where poten- 

 tial energy is higher, finally moving slowest of all where there 

 is least matter. 



In the case of bodies moving indiscriminately, where 

 motion is slowest, they tend to aggregate. If over a plain all 

 persons walked in indiscriminate directions at four miles per 

 hour, except within a certain area where they walked one mile 

 per hour, there w T ould be on the average four times as many 

 persons in equal areas within that space as elsewhere. So in 

 cosmic space this diffused gas will move slowest, and tend to 

 aggregate in the bare parts of the cosmos. Thus, to summarize : 

 Badiant energy falling on the dust of space is converted into 

 diffused heat, the lowest form of energy, and this is transferred 

 to free light molecules, increasing their velocity, and this 

 motion is converted into the potential energy of gravitation, 

 the highest form of energy. At one and the same time, in 

 opposition to the theory of the dissipation of energy, there 

 is a tendency to disperse matter and raise energy. 



Were hydrogen and other light molecules plentiful enough, 

 obviously this action would not cease until the rare parts of 

 space were as well filled with these light molecules as the 

 rest of space with other matter. There is no necessity, how- 

 ever, to assume this enormous amount of hydrogen as far as 

 the purpose of this theory is concerned, for after a time 

 another action sets in. Where matter is aggregated into con- 

 densed masses, as in our universe, free bodies such as 

 comets, or stars of 1830 Groombridge type, pass through 

 and escape from them ; but this is not the case in a mass 

 of diffused gas, the retarding friction of which tends to stop 

 all such wandering bodies entering it. Thus the sparse 

 portions of space, once filled with diffused hydrogen, become 

 traps to catch indiscriminately-travelling matter. So after 

 a time accumulation goes on, not because molecules come 

 to partial rest there, but because of the gathering action of 

 the friction of diffused gas, and coalescence sets in, due to 

 the presence of these trapped stars. As radiation from these 

 bodies permits condensation, a new universe begins to form 



