THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2734, 12 February 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

VII. (By Professor A. AY. Biekerton.) IMPACT OF COSMIC SYSTEMS: AVe have now taken a cursory glance at the amazing mass of phenomena that rigid deduction from the laws of matter and motion tell us must occur should dead suns come into grazing collision. To sum up, astronomers tell us there are centainly dead suns; that many linos of reasoning suggest that these bodies exist in countless myriads; suggest' also that there is a reasonable expectation of occasional collisions: that on the doctrine of probability these collisions will bo of a grazing character. They tell us also that every body and system that have Been deduced, as evolving from the impact have many representatives; that such bodies and systems possess every detail of structure, of association and of spectra that these deductions point out-; that tho mass of correspondences between deductions and fact is •so extraordinary in their intricate complexity that any of the suggestions of their being the result of chance is altogether absurd. Gifford’s opinion on this matter is conclusive. On the other hand, ford has pointed o'ut, there is absolute, ly no explanation save this one but breaks down utterly when compared with a mere tithe of the facts. This intimate, correspondence of fact and theory, as seen in the partial impacts of suns, is but a small portion of the whole work; yes this portion is so rich in discovery, in suggestion for further lines of research, so classifies and correllates phenomena, that did it stand alone it would be epoch-making. But it does not. stand alone; it is directly related to other branches of cosmic evolution, when all is well known it must influence- tho basic philosophic thoughts of mankind, and that promises a veritable world harvest of joyous results.

Leaving these thoughts we will advance on our journey in the realm of constructive collision. AA 7 e have talked of the impact of dead suns. But other cosmic systems may clash. Living. light-giving, luminous suns may collide, meteqric smarms or star clusters mav plunge through one another, nebula may collide with nebula, vast cosmic systems, as the Alagellanic clouds or our own galactic system, the Alilky Way, that we commonly call the universe. may meet similar cosmic systems and for millions of centuries be passing through each other. Or a dead sun or a vivid star may collide with one another, or each of these, may collide with other systems in infinite variety, each collision having definite kinetic and kinematic results, examples on examples of which are represented in the celestial sphere. So rich in impossibility is the whole conception that the mind reels in attempting to take in the stupendous whole. Change of thought becomes a

necessity, and a new start must be made later on; even in studying some beautiful detail of the vast structure the same richness one. But it is not a series of large quarto volumes wo are at present attempting. But a few articles, showing in detail some of the earlier ideas that grew up into tlie vast science of cosmic evolution. Such articles permit only an illuminating glance at the complex interacting agencies that give us the possibilities of an immortal cosmos. A partial impact of dead suns or vivid stars, is an explosion with something of a whirling action threading itself through the tremendous event, although the remnants of the whirl will generally prevent any massive aggrega. tion, and will give ns meteoric swarms and star clusters. It will not produce the lovely spirals, spindles or other exquisite forms of nebulae such as exist and form the floral beauties of the celestial garden. But although a partial graze of a star must be an explosion blowing it largely to independent atoms, the graze of a globular nelmla would' be quite another thing.

The graze of an ordinary star is over in an hour; not so a nebular graze, nor that of a- vast meteoric swarm. Not hours, nor years, but many centuries would 1 be required to eomplete the grazing collision of diffuse d masses having dimensions many times those of the solar system. And that is the scale upon which nebulae arc built.

The giant ring of the orbit of Neptune would be but as an inch-tape to measure the mile of many nebulae. Here, is a fact Lockycr has overlooked: no new star would be born in an hour by the impact of meteoric swarms, nor even in a year. Many years would be required to evolve a body -whose intrinsic light was a thousand times that of the sun, were it produced by impacting meteoric swarms, and thousands of years would be requii'cd for its cooling and disappearance. Globular nebular grazes would give a long strip of light between the grazing surfaces ; many nebulae show this now. This portion would be brighter than the general surface. Then a spindle might appear, then an incipient spiral would show in the spindle. Then fully developed spirals would appear, almost always double, as they are in Nature. Then, by continued action, the spiral would slow.]3’ pass into discs with, spiral structure. ’ * Many other kinematic changes are to be deduced, if we think of differences of depth of impact, differences of volume of the two grazing nebulae, differences of density of the gaseous bodies, and difference in initial velocity.* Industrious searching of the celestial vault shows each and every on© of these definite, forms that theo'ry has deduced, and show them where we should expect them ter be — not among the- myriad marvels of the Milky Way but at the poles of that wondrous ring of stars midst the globular nebulae that clothe the regions at the poles of that stellar ring. The same kinomatic reasoning carries us to impacts of meteoric swarms and star clusters, and we see emerging from the storm of the conflict systems similar to our solar system. The larger of the original masses of material would form the nucleus of our present planets. These, after a long baptism of fire, cool, solidify, and become ocean and.continent. 1 Then, as in the. case of our earth, this may break into a glorious inflorescence of vegetation, with its accompanying animal life, evolving to the divine character of the Christ-like man. Tlien the eye of the imagination sees cosmic systems of such order as the Magellanic clouds plunging for millions on millions of years through each other, the outer parts whirling around one another, and giving birth to a rough circle of stars similar to our Milky Way. It is easy to picture, as the. outer parts of such vast masses whirl round each other, and form the irregular ring, how the parts actually colliding will be heated, and will volatilise, forming a great central furnace, that grows in extent and temperature, with every impact. The members of the newly-formed double stars will liav© had their onward motion bent into

ellipses, the whole becoming a vast cosmic area of blocked progress. As the mass concentrates attraction increases, and every collision produces a more and more fervent heat. Presently, as the centuries pass and tho heat of the furnace becomes more fervent, every dead sun and vivid star that, enters this region of glowing gas will even without impact lie converted into blazing meteors, as aro the particles of cosmic dust that rush through our atmosphere. With every new arrival the pressure and heat increase till imagination quite fails to grasp tho millions of the atmosphere of pressure, and tho thousands of millions of degrees of temperature. The pressure will, of course, act in all directions.' This heated gas will be enclosed all around in the plane of motion, and' it will be forced out in the two directions of the polar axis, clothing each pole with vast caps of gas and cosmic dust. In many ways nuclei will form in this gas. and their will be condensed into gobular nebulae, and these, by collision, will form the dumb-bells, the spindles and spirals already described, and that stud those very regions of the celestial vault. On the other hand, in the stellar ring itself, with its dead suns and bright stars, wo should expect to find the result of the collision of these bodies, namely, meteoric swarms and star clusters, temporary, variable, and double stars, and the disc-on-disc-like planetary nebulae. There we should also expect to find many streams and sprays of stars and much community of star motion. Arid on carefully searching we actually find all tlie.se wonders in this very' ring, exactly where we should expect them to be! Although the vast central furnace of our galactic universe blew itself out ages ago, and the high kinetol of the gases left the space empty, it would seem, however, by the latest photographs that in the great nebula of Andromeda we have still a system with the central mass blazing.

Wlm the strong attraction of the central mass ceased to act the great galaxy used up much of the velocity of the stars in increasing the diameter of its giant ring, doubtless many of the stars wandering into distance space, hut the. great majority are still held in leash by the mutual attraction of the mighty whole, each sun pursuing its stately march as a member of one of the two majestic streams of stars that are still interpenetrating one another.

Thus, then, we have traced out the mode of birth of our visible universe, and after a slight sketch of the mode of the re-birth of such cosmic bodies, we must finish our sketch. AX IMMORTAL COSMOS.

Deduction and observation both tell us that snace is dusty, and it is Struve’s opinion that this dust acts as a curtain and cuts off the view of most of the distant cosmic systems.

The character of the two Magellan clouds suggests that these two smaller systems are of the same cosmic order as our galaxy. Herschel was of opinion that some irresolvable nebulae might be so also. But if, as suggested by the theory, the galaxy shows by its structure that- it is actually formed by the collision of the two previously existing cosmic systems, then there may he many of such systems. The further anything gets from a cosmic body or system, the slower it moves. Hence, all the light gas that by atom-sorting and other agencies is flying from systems, will linger longest where matter is rarest. In these sparsely-spread regions it will accumulate. In this way matter tends to segregate, the heavy atoms remaining in the old cosmic systems and the light atoms, taken there by their high kinetol, tending to fill the empty parts of space that gravitation has drained. Hence there are two aggregating tendencies in Nature, gravitation tending to concentrate heavy atoms into star clusters, dead suns and Ytars, and these newly-detected agencies that together tend to carry away and concentrate the light gasses in the. empty regions of space. "Runaway stars” may pass through such a system as ours, but may bo entrapped by these vast fields of gas that is thus spread over the parts of space most distant from stellar systems. Hence cosmic birth and infancy commence by the assembly of the light atoms of matter in t-lie empty parts of space, and cosmic death by the aggregation of heavy atoms. Cosmic youth is brought about by the action of oxygen, chlorine and such negative atoms wedding positive atoms and forming compound molecules, and by entrapping errant bodies, whilst the mature virile universes are produced by the interfusion of aged and youthful cosmic systems. The complex agencies by which radiant energy is picked up by the dust of.space; how this energy becomes the, kinetic energy of motion of light molecules; liow this, in turn, becomes potential energy of gravitation by carrying such light atoms to distant space, thus converting the lowest form of dissipated energv to its highest form, and many other agencies—are they not contained in the “Romance of the Heavens,” in “A New Story of the Stars,” in the “Perils of a Pioneer,” and many other technical papers. And is it an optimistic belief that funds will be forthcoming, and that these scattered portions of the more complex conceptions of this system of cosmic evolution may be- brought together, may have their details filled in by special experts, may be fully treated both graphically and analytically, and published in quarto volumes in a form worthy of their importance, in this way giving us, as Professor Aldis has suggested, a new “Mecanique Celeste,” in which not alone is the mode of the origin of the solar systems developed, but the origin of every body and System in the'Universe and the origin of our galactic universe itself? Here wo should have displayed not merely the new mode- of its birth, its youth, , its maturity, and its death, but also the full mechanism of its re-birth, composing a' cyclic scheme, in which there is no evidence of a beginning or premise ,of an end—a scheme of creation flawless and immortal.