Physico-chemical considerations in astrophysics

✍ Scribed by Walther Nernst

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1928
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 404 KB
• Volume: 206
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(28)91483-0

✦ Synopsis

AMONG the greatest advances which astrophysics has made in recent years, undoubtedly belong the apparently extremely reliable determination of the age of the earth, which has been arrived at on the basis of measurements by numerous investigators using the methods and theories of radio-activity. It is now regarded practically everywhere as certain that the production of the solid crust of the earth took place about sixteen hundred million years ago.

We make the following assumptions: I. The earth was split off from the sun as a ball of fire of high temperature.

2. The Universe is in a stationary condition, that is, the present fixed stars cool continually and new ones are being formed.

So far as the first assumption is concerned, I cannot conceive that it can really be brought into question; all other assumptions, of whatever character, appear so extremely artificial that they, at least for the present, can scarcely be dis-* Read by Dr. Irving Langmuir.