RECENT COSMOGONIES 223 



nance, and regulation of the planetary motions, comes 

 that of the source of the solar heat. Heretofore it has 

 been the aim of cosmologists to seek a solution of both 

 these problems concurrently and compatibly, but Doctor 

 Chamberlin has unique ideas of his own. Though os- 

 tensibly professing to believe in the classical division of 

 energy into potential and kinetic, and that old stars are 

 thermally impoverished and moribund, he naively makes 

 our ancestral and presumably senile sun overturn the 

 order of things and hurl the planets into their distant 

 places. He has just reversed the film. Having started 

 out with the avowed object of clearing up the mystery of 

 climatic revulsions, he has ended by only floundering 

 deeper into the bog out of which he volunteered to lead 

 us. 



THE THEORY OF AKRHENITJS 



The celebrated Director of the Physics Chemical 

 Nobel Institute of Stockholm, Svante Arrhenius, has ex- 

 pounded his views on this subject of cosmology in a small 

 volume called Worlds in the Making. As Doctor Cham- 

 berlin 's theory was conceived from the viewpoint of a 

 geologist, so is this one conceived from the viewpoint of 

 the astrophysicist and chemist. 



According to a recent doctrine, the molecules of mat- 

 ter are believed to be in constant motion. Usually those 

 are so closely associated that they are much subject to 

 collision, but in free space, where they seldom strike 

 against one another, they are supposed to travel in 

 straight lines at velocities varying with their kinds. 

 Such motions when less than the "parabolic velocity" do 

 not permit the escape of the given molecule, but when the 

 contrary is the case, the molecule, it is declared, will 

 never again return to the cosmic body from which it took 

 its flight. Building upon this uncertain base, Arrhenius 

 imagines these vagabond molecules to accumulate for- 

 tuitously in the dust nebulae which, as I have previously 

 explained, modern scientists assert to be borne out by 

 light and electrical repulsive forces. 



