Worlds in the Making: the Evolution of the Universe

Volume I Have Added Some Further Sections to the Complex of Explanatory

arguments concerning the evolution of the Universe. The foundation to these explanations was laid in a memoir which I presented to the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm in 1900. The memoir was soon afterwards printed in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, and the subject was further developed in my Treatise of Cosmic Physics.

It will be objected, and not without justification, that scientific theses should first be discussed and approved of in competent circles before they are placed before the public. It cannot be denied that, if this condition were to be fulfilled, most of the suggestions on cosmogony that have been published would never have been sent to the compositors; nor do I deny that the labor spent upon their publication might have been employed for some better purpose. But several years have elapsed since my first attempts in this direction were communicated to scientists. My suggestions have met with a favorable reception, and I have, during these years, had ample opportunity carefully to re-examine and to amend my explanations. I therefore feel justified in submitting my views to a larger circle of readers.

The problem of the evolution of the Universe has always excited the profound interest of thinking men. And it will, without doubt, remain the most eminent among all the questions which do not have any direct, practical bearing. Different ages have arrived at different solutions to this great problem. Each of these solutions reflected the stand-point of the natural philosophers of its time. Let me hope that the considerations which I offer will be worthy of the grand progress in physics and chemistry that has marked the close of the nineteenth and the opening of the twentieth century.

Before the indestructibility of energy was understood, cosmogony merely dealt with the question how matter could have been arranged in such a manner as to give rise to the actual worlds. The most remarkable conception of this kind we find in Herschel’s suggestion of the evolution of stellar nebulæ, and in the thesis of Laplace concerning the formation of the solar system out of the universal nebula. Observations more and more tend to confirm Herschel’s view. The thesis of Laplace, for a long time eulogized as the flower of cosmogonic speculations, has more and more had to be modified. If we attempt, with Kant, to conceive how wonderfully organized stellar systems could originate from absolute chaos, we shall have to admit that we are attacking a problem which is insoluble in that shape. There is a contradiction in those very attempts to explain the origin of the Universe in its totality, as Stallo emphasizes: “The only question to which a series of phenomena gives legitimate rise relates to their filiation and interdependence.” I have, therefore, only endeavored to show how nebulæ may originate from suns and suns from nebulæ; and I assume that this change has always been proceeding as it is now.

The recognition of the indestructibility of energy seemed to accentuate the difficulties of the cosmogonic problems. The theses of Mayer and of Helmholtz, on the manner in which the Sun replenishes its losses of heat, have had to be abandoned. My explanation is based upon chemical reactions in the interior of the Sun in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. The theory of the “degradation” of energy appeared to introduce a still greater difficulty. That theory seems to lead to the inevitable conclusion that the Universe is tending towards the state which Clausius has designated as “Wärme Tod” (heat death), when all the energy of the Universe will uniformly be distributed through space in the shape of movements of the smallest particles. That would imply an absolutely inconceivable end of the development of the Universe. The way out of this difficulty which I propose comes to this: the energy is “degraded” in bodies which are in the solar state, and the energy is “elevated,” raised to a higher level, in bodies which are in the nebular state.

Finally, I wish to touch upon one cosmogonical question which has recently become more actual than it used to be. Some kind of “spontaneous generation,” origination of life from inorganic matter, had been acquiesced in. But just as the dreams of a spontaneous generation of energy—i.e., of a perpetuum mobile—have been dispelled by the negative results of all experiments in that direction, just in the same way we shall have to give up the idea of a spontaneous generation of life after all the repeated disappointments in this field of investigation. As Helmholtz says, in his popular lecture on the growth of the planetary system (1871): “It seems to me a perfectly just scientific procedure, if we, after the failure of all our attempts to produce organisms from lifeless matter, put the question, whether life has had a beginning at all, or whether it is not as old as matter, and whether seeds have not been carried from one planet to another and have developed everywhere where they have fallen on a fertile soil.”

This hypothesis is called the hypothesis of panspermia, which I have modified by combining it with the thesis of the radiation pressure.

My guiding principle in this exposition of cosmogonic problems has been the conviction that the Universe in its essence has always been what it is now. Matter, energy, and life have only varied as to shape and position in space.

THE AUTHOR.

STOCKHOLM, December, 1907.

WORLDS IN THE MAKING

VOLCANIC PHENOMENA AND EARTHQUAKES

The Interior of the Earth

The disasters which have recently befallen the flourishing settlements near Vesuvius and in California have once more directed the attention of mankind to the terrific forces which manifest themselves by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

The losses of life which have been caused in these two last instances are, however, insignificant by comparison with those which various previous catastrophes of this kind have produced. The most violent volcanic eruption of modern times is no doubt that of August 26 and 27, 1883, by which two-thirds of the island of Krakatoa, 33 square kilometres (13 square miles) in area, situated in the East Indian Archipelago, were blown into the air. Although this island was itself uninhabited, some 40,000 people perished on that occasion, chiefly by the ocean wave which followed the eruption and which caused disastrous inundations in the district. Still more terrible was the destruction wrought by the Calabrian earthquake of February and March, 1783, which consisted of several earthquake waves. The large town of Messina was destroyed on February 5th, and the number of people killed by this event has been estimated at 100,000. The same region, especially Calabria, has, moreover, frequently been visited by disastrous earthquakes—again in 1905 and 1907. Another catastrophe upon which history dwells, owing to the loss of life (not less than 90,000), was the destruction of the capital of Portugal on November 1, 1755. Two-thirds of the human lives which this earthquake claimed were destroyed by a wave 5 m. in height rushing in from the sea.

Vesuvius is undoubtedly the best studied of all volcanoes. During the splendor of Rome this mountain was quite peaceful—known as an extinct volcanic cone so far as history could be traced back. On the extraordinarily fertile soil about it had arisen big colonies of such wealth that the district was called Great Greece (Græcia Magna). Then came, in the year 79 A.D., the devastating eruption which destroyed, among others, the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The volumes of gas, rushing forth with extreme violence from the interior of the earth, pushed aside a large part of the volcanic cone whose remnant is now called Monte Somma, and the falling masses of ashes, mixed with streams of lava, built up the new Vesuvius. This mountain has repeatedly changed its appearance during later eruptions, and was provided with a new cone of ashes in the year 1906. The outbreak of the year 79 was succeeded by new eruptions in the years 203, 472, 512, 685, 993, 1036, 1139, 1500, 1631, and 1660, at quite irregular intervals. Since that time Vesuvius has been in almost uninterrupted activity, mostly, however, of a harmless kind, so that only the cloud of smoke over its crater indicated that the internal glow was not yet extinguished. Very violent eruptions took place in the years 1794, 1822, 1872, and 1906.

Other volcanoes behave quite differently from these violent volcanoes, and do hardly any noteworthy damage. Among these is the crater-island of Stromboli, situated between Sicily and Calabria. This volcano has been in continuous activity for thousands of years. Its eruptions succeed one another at intervals ranging from one minute to twenty minutes, and its fire serves the sailors as a natural light-house. The force of this volcano is, of course, unequal at different periods. In the summer of 1906 it is said to have been in unusually violent activity. Very quiet, as a rule, are the eruptions of the great volcanoes on Hawaii.

Foremost among the substances which are ejected from volcanoes is water vapor. The cloud floating above the crater is, for this reason, the surest criterion of the activity of the volcano. Violent eruptions drive the masses of steam up into the air to heights of 8 km. (5 miles), as the illustrations (Figs. 1 to 4) will show.

Continue reading Worlds in the Making: the Evolution of the Universe free in the Wunder reader →