674 T - c - CHAMBERLIN 



This view had its origin in the grave cosmogonic difficulties that 

 had been discovered in the gaseous and quasi-gaseous theories 

 of the earth's origin. Of the two rival views thus already in the field, 

 the one postulated a plethora of heat at- the outset and a gradual 

 loss in all later time, the other postulated at the outset a more 

 limited supply of heat which was increased as compression pro- 

 gressed. The adequacy of such compression to give a sufficiency 

 of heat was a subject of debate from the inception of the view. 1 

 To the interest that naturally attaches to the discovery of a wholly 

 unexpected agency, already acute because of the agent's singular 

 qualities, there was thus added piquancy in view of its inevitable 

 bearings on the thermal problem of the earth's interior and on the 

 hypotheses of the earth's origin. 



An even more fundamental though less imminent interest was 

 awakened by the discovery that some of the atoms of the earth- 

 substance are undergoing spontaneous disintegration and that all 

 atoms may possibly be doing so and that even the permanency of 

 terrestrial substance may be brought into question. However, 

 matters of this ultra-radical nature cannot be discussed with 

 advantage as yet, for little light has been shed on the broad ques- 

 tion whether all terrestrial substance is in process of disintegration, 

 and on the complementary question whether atoms are some- 

 where and somehow undergoing integration. 



If the general tenor of the studies thus far made is to be trusted, 

 nothing in the field of common experience seriously inhibits the 

 dissolution of the radioactive substances. It does not appear 

 that even the greatest heightening or lowering of temperature or 

 pressure that can be brought to bear either stays or hastens, in 

 any material measure, the progress of atomic disintegration. Nor 

 do any known changes of chemical union or disunion, of concen- 

 tration or diffusion, or of freedom or confinement seem materially 

 to retard or accelerate the spontaneous dissolution. There is 

 probably no warrant for an unqualified affirmation that neither 

 temperature, pressure, concentration, exposure, nor combination 



1 The status of the problem of the earth's heat as it stood near the opening of the 

 twentieth century is sketched more fully in Year Book No. 2, Carnegie Institution, 

 1903, 262-65, and in Geology, Chamberlin and Salisbury, I (1904), 533-47. 



