370 



KNOWLEDGE. 



October, 1913. 



facts. Clausius has taught us that the end of the 

 universe as an abode of life or available energy will 

 be reached when entropy becomes a maximum, and 

 that it does tend to such a maximum. This con- 

 clusion is not contradicted, it is only enlarged so as 

 to include in the available energy the enormous 

 stores of power contained in every atom. The end 

 of the universe, or at least one sub-period of it, is 

 reached when every atom has disintegrated into its 

 component parts, be they electrons or the elusive 

 nebulium of which nebulae are mainly composed. 

 The older cosmogonists started with nebulium, 

 which in some way could condense into atoms and 

 end with vast cold stars consisting of heterogeneous 

 collections of atoms containing enormous stores of 

 unavailable energy. The present hypothesis reverses 

 the process. We know there are meteorites — 

 numbers flash through our atmosphere and are seen 

 on every clear dark night ; a few reach the surface of 

 the earth. Examination and analysis of the meteors 

 which have been found show that in the main these 

 bodies contain all the elements found upon the 

 earth, and that they are compact bodies formed 

 under considerable pressure. How they came into 

 being is quite unknown ; to us they must represent 

 an earlier stage or sub-period of the universe akin to 

 the egg or chrysalis stage in the butterfly's period of 

 existence. The earth is increasing its mass by these 

 falls of meteorites, but the increase although 

 constantly in action is very slow. But it is 

 improbable that the planets of the solar system were 

 formed by this process ; it is possible that the 

 planets grow by accretion, but their formation was 

 due to explosions of the central mass. As long as 

 matter was considered to be inert, there was no 

 limit to the quantity of it which could be assembled 

 in one mass and held together by the power of the 

 mutual gravitation of its parts. But it is obvious on 

 further thought that a time will come when the 

 gravitational pressure of a mass will break into the 

 atomic structure of its matter and cause explosions. 

 It is by such explosions that planets are thrown off. 

 We can imagine that in the solar system one great 

 explosion threw off all the planets and their satellites, 

 and that some of the satellites are due to sub- 

 explosions at the same epoch, and some due to 

 capture of remnants. In this, the solar-type of 

 explosion, but one seven hundred and thirtieth part 

 of the solar mass was thrown off, but we may 

 expect all types of explosions — thus the original 

 mass might explode into two nearly equal parts, 

 examples of which we see in many double-star 

 systems, or the explosion might be so shattering that 

 the original mass is almost uniformly broken into 

 thousands of fragments forming a star-cluster like 

 w Centauri or £ Toucani. Or the mass of a system 

 may so nearly balance the explosive force that 

 explosions are muffled and intermittent ; these 

 would give rise to stellar-variability or, in the case of 

 a body like the Sun, act as one of the causes of 

 sunspots. It has been shown that some of the 

 transformations of radium are rhythmic, a fact which 



suggests that the sunspot period may be due to 

 atomic disintegration. 



Here we may remark that it is not impossible 

 that explosive action on the Earth, as shown in 

 volcanic action, is due to the liberation of atomic 

 energy ; formerly it was ascribed to the percolation 

 of water into hot strata, but the recent researches of 

 A. Brun have proved that the ejecta of volcanoes 

 are free from either steam or water. A time comes 

 when the central mass of a system becomes fairly 

 quiescent, such as the Sun now is. In this quiescent 

 stage the Sun is a globe of liquid with an enormous 

 radiation of heat and light waves, and emitting 

 electrons ; its heat is mainly due to atomic disin- 

 tegration which will continue as long as any of it 

 remains, or, in other words, as long as it contains 

 atoms of more than gaseous atomic weight. Its end 

 will be approached by its passing into a gaseous or 

 stellar state, which will later devolve into a nebula. 

 There are no dark suns or stars. Continuity requires 

 that the Earth and other planets should be going 

 through a like process, but on a much slower scale 

 owing to their smaller masses, and perhaps, also, to 

 the different proportions of the elements of which 

 their chemical constitutions are built up ; one can 

 imagine that whilst, say, Jupiter is still growing by 

 planetesimal accretion, the Sun's attractive mass may 

 become so small through the emission of electrons 

 that the centre of our system will be transferred, in 

 the course of ages, to the planet Jupiter. 



The explosion hypothesis suggests an explanation 

 for the phenomena exhibited by the so-called Novae 

 or new stars ; these are small stars which almost 

 instantly increase enormously in luminosity and 

 slowly and somewhat irregularly fade away, often to 

 small nebulae. These may be assumed to be gaseous 

 stars, in which the ratio of their specific heats exceeds 

 one and one-third ; they are then essentially unstable, 

 and a time comes when a radical change of state 

 occurs — a sudden blaze up, followed in most cases 

 by a rapid disintegration into the final state of 

 nebulosity, in which entropy has become a maximum 

 and atomic energy a minimum. 



The implication of this hypothesis in the glacial 

 epochs of the Earth is simple. A glacial period 

 will come on slowly as the heat of the Sun falls 

 through the rhythmic close of a period of chemical 

 disintegration ; the hot period will come on suddenly 

 with a prodigious melting of the waters, a time of 

 maximum temperature following the epoch of 

 greatest cold comparatively closely. If temperature 

 and time were plotted the curve would resemble 

 that of the light of a variable star, as it should, 

 because the cause at work is the same. 



If we seem to live in an age of uniformity in 

 temperature conditions, it is perhaps because the 

 race can only flourish under such circumstances ; the 

 theory gives no promise of continued uniformity. 

 An explosive disintegration of atomic energy on the 

 Sun may occur at any time. We can only surmise 

 from past conditions on the Earth that at present 

 the Sun is getting colder in preparation or as an 



