Dr R. A. Millikan 167 



Technology, he said, " My recent experiments with cosmic 

 rays leave no doubt in my mind that the process of 

 creation is now going on in the heavens, and that our 

 earth is not, as has long been believed, a disintegrating 

 planet/' He went on to say that the extraordinarily 

 penetrating qualities of the cosmic rays provide not only 

 the first direct evidence that the more abundant elements 

 are now in process of being created out of positive and 

 negative electrons, but also the first indication as to the 

 general character of the specific act or acts by which the 

 atom-building process goes on. 



In his book Science and the New Civilization (Charles 

 Scribner's Sons, 1930) Dr Millikan says : 



These rays are not produced, as are X-rays, by the impact 

 upon the atoms of matter of electrons that have acquired large 

 velocities by falling through powerful electrical fields . . . but 

 they are rather produced by definite and constantly recurring 

 atomic transformations involving very much greater energy 

 changes than any occurring in radio-active processes. 



Where these changes take place Dr Millikan does not 

 profess to know definitely. He speaks of them as hap- 

 pening in some " infinitely remote abysses of inter-stellar 

 or inter-galactic space where the pressures and tempera- 

 tures are close to absolute zero/' But he has come to the 

 definite conclusion that the rays which he has trapped 

 and measured with such extreme accuracy are, in his own 

 picturesque phrase, the ' birth-squeaks ' of elements such 

 as helium, oxygen, silicon, and iron. 



Atom-destruction is constantly going on. At the centre 

 of great suns, where the temperature may exceed thirty 

 million degrees, atoms as we know them cannot exist. 

 Our own sun is constantly flinging forth electrons which 

 are the remains of broken atoms, yet side by side with this 

 process there is one of construction. 



The universe, in fact, is being wound up as fast as it 



