PHYSICAL BACKGROUND OF EVOLUTION I7 



showed that such a static universe would be unstable and, 

 along with W. de Sitter, postulated a cosmos constantly ex- 

 panding outward in all directions. The advocates of this 

 theory think that the universe was born some 4,000,000,000 

 years ago when all the matter now scattered in space 

 was exploded after being concentrated in one superatom. 

 George Gamow tells a breathless story of this moment- 

 neutrons, electrons, protons madly milling in a holocaust of 

 billions of degree temperature, exploding outward as the 

 heat reaches the critical point; then in a brief hour of evo- 

 lution all the elements, beginning with hydrogen, being 

 formed. The red shift would tend to confirm the expanding 

 universe concept, provided it can be shown that the shift 

 is not due to the degradation of light in its long journey 

 through the space-time continuum or to the operation of 

 unknown physical laws. One of the programs assigned to 

 the new 200-inch reflector at Palomar is the study of this 

 situation. 



Some years ago E. A. Milne proposed a new doctrine 

 which he called kinematic relativity, whereby he attempted 

 to explain the phenomenon of the expanding universe with- 

 out appeal to the idea of a curved, finite space. Many feel 

 that this theory is, like Einstein's general relativity, one of 

 the truly great imaginative doctrines of all time. In Milne's 

 universe, as considered in one time-frame, galaxies are in 

 mutual recession from each other; and, as measured from 

 any particular galaxy, the others are receding in such a 

 manner that the farther away they are, the greater the speed 

 of recession. The galaxies, as described in this time-frame, 

 came into existence at a "point-singularity" zero time (crea- 

 tion) and from that moment on have been expanding. In 

 another time-frame and in hyperbolic space this same uni- 

 verse can be interpreted differently by changing the mode 

 of clock-graduation. In this second time-frame the galaxies 

 will appear stationary with reference to each other, there 

 will be no point of origin, and the universe will be infinite 



