PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 65 



rangement however is very different. Working under 

 the Laplacian hypothesis that a star is a contracting 

 mass of gas and that the energies of a star are derived 

 from the contraction, Enssell's arrangement is merely 

 one of age ; the young star is a giant and the old one is 

 a dwarf. Under the present hypothesis the energies 

 of contraction play a very insignificant role and the 

 question of a star's age is discarded altogether. A star's 

 energy is a function of its mass, and the energy is de- 

 rived from the breakdown of the atom itself due to the 

 excessive violence of the conditions imposed upon it by 

 the increasing gravitational stresses. 



According to the current concepts of physics the hy- 

 drogen atom is composed of a nucleus with a positive 

 electrical charge and an electron with a negative charge, 

 the two charges being numerically equal, and the elec- 

 tron in very rapid orbital motion about the positive 

 nucleus. The atoms of the other elements are built up 

 of hydrogen atoms suitably welded together. The elec- 

 trical field, at a distance which is great as compared with 

 the size of the atom, is therefore neutral; and likewise 

 matter in a normal state is electrically neutral, since 

 it is composed of eciual numbers of positive and negative 

 units. In the immediate neighborhood of the atom, how- 

 ever, the electric field is rapidly oscillatory, and the 

 property of mass is due to the electric charges. Under 

 the conditions of extreme temperature and pressure 

 such as must exist in the interior of a star, a large num- 

 ber of the atoms must be disintegrated and resolved into 

 free positive nuclei and negative electrons. Doubtless 

 these combine to form atoms which exist for an instant 

 and are then disintegrated, but occasionally a positive 

 nucleus and a negative electron meet in a head-on col- 

 lision and the two unite as though the nucleus was buried 

 deep in the electron (the diameter of the electron is 2000 

 times the diameter of the nucleus). The resulting 

 physical unit would not have the properties of an atom 

 for there would be an exact super-position of the elec- 

 trical fields, and the property of mass, at least in the 

 gravitational sense, would disappear. The high speeds 



