Bickerton. — On the Immortality of the Cosmos. 543 



a body attains sufficient velocity to escape, when it has that 

 velocity it is gone for ever, so that ultimately most of the 

 remaining energy of a system of indiscriminately - moving 

 bodies will be used up in giving an escaping proper motion to 

 some of its members. 



Think of an analogy. The energy of the attraction of 

 potassium for oxygen is enormous compared with the affinity 

 of carbon for oxygen. But carbon is a fixed substance, as 

 also is carbonate of potash. When, by the most extraordinary 

 coincidence of abnormal velocities, carbon succeeds in dis- 

 lodging potassium and taking up its oxygen, both the sub- 

 stances form gases, and they at once escape the influence of 

 their affinities ; and so this most remarkable fact occurs : that 

 carbon is capable of reducing potassium from its compounds. 

 So with the escaping bodies from a system : give them time 

 enough, and they must go as long as there is energy enough to 

 send them. 



Nor must we forget that, as a universe contracts, its 

 potential energy is slowly turned into motion, so that the 

 mean velocity of stars will become much greater. They 

 would be closer together, and the number of their approaches 

 and encounters more and more frequent, tending all the 

 time to disperse matter. Taken altogether there seems to 

 be an abundance of agencies from the time of impact and 

 coalescence of the original universes to the time of the con- 

 centration of this new universe for the dispersal of one-half of 

 the original mass ; so that at the final state of the universe 

 its mass will be no greater than that of one of the universes 

 from which it was formed. 



The series of these agencies are as follow : — 



1. Diffusion of heat by radiation. 



2. Heating of cosmic dust by radiation. 



3. The heat of cosmic dust taken away by slowly-moving 

 hydrogen molecules. 



4. Free hydrogen will remain longest where its motion is 

 least, and will aggregate in the empty parts of space. 



5. It then becomes a trap for wandering bodies, that tend 

 to be stopped and converted into dense nebulae. 



6. These dense nebulas tend to attract surrounding gas ; 

 they cool and shrink, ultimately forming solid bodies. 



7. These solid bodies, by mutual attraction, give form to 

 the new universe. 



8. Such universes are of the first order. 



9. The impact of universes of the first order produces uni- 

 verses of the same type as our own. 



10. The coalescence of two universes does not necessarily 

 result finally in a universe of larger mass than either of the 



