NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



ing it to incandescence, know from the charac- 

 teristic lines exactly what elements it contains. 

 Using this means of identification, we find in the 

 sun many of our terrestrial elements, while many 

 more are lacking. Assuming that the course of 

 nature does not vary throughout the known uni- 

 verse, the inference is that in the sun many "ele- 

 ments" have been decomposed. 



In the white stars, like Sirius, the simplification 

 seems to have gone much further. Very few of our 

 elements may be identified in the spectrum they 

 give. There are some stars that appear to be 

 made up chiefly of hydrogen, the simplest and 

 lightest element known. This has led to the 

 conjecture that at a sufficiently high temperature 

 all the elements would be broken up, and that we 

 should have a single primal form of matter. Our 

 "elements," then, in this view, represent mere- 

 ly the condensation and combination, in various 

 ways, of this primal matter. In another essay, 1 I 

 have recounted the efforts of Professor J. J. Thom- 

 son and others to find out just what this primal 

 matter may be. 



Sir Norman Lockyer and others have endeav- 

 ored to give this fascinating hypothesis of Atomic 

 Evolution a solid support. The experimental evi- 



1 See "The Search for Primal Matter," p. 145. 



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