The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-03-22
MYSTERIOUS PROBLEMS
 SCIENTISTS TRY TO SOLVE
Is the Universe Rebuilding Itself Will It Some Day Run Down?-Do Stars Cool Off Into Planets, and Planets
 Into Dead Moons?
From t6e Chicago Tribune.

1 From the Chicago Tribune.
 Is the universe rebuilding itself2
 We're the worlds wound up like a
 clock some thousands of aeons ago
 to run down. gradually and come to
 an end? Or are they sort of self
 winding clock that never stops but always begins to tighten it's spring
 again as soon as these are relea sed2
 Do the stars cool off into planets and
 the planets with their swarming life
 fade away into dead moons and the
 moons break up into meteoric dust. ono after another until all have dissolved away and naught remains of the unl-
 verse and the atomic dust itself rad
 ated away into nothingness?
 or does the spent energy regather
 with fresh force. rebuild tn atoms into
 new molecules. the new molecules into
 new meteurites the new meteorites into new stars, and the new stars into new
 worlds, the new worlds peopling with
 fresh flowers and fields and folks--aHd so on farever2
 This Is the stupendous speculation
 that Is daring 10 enter and haunt the
 minds of mighty moderns like Sir Nor man T.oekYer. like Sir William Ram
 say. like Prof Frederick Soddy and
 uu,.el- prophets of the New Know ledge,
 and is simplihed into the vocabulartes and notions of everyday people by Prof Robert Kennedy Duncan of the University of Nebraska.
 The new idea of the universe recon
 straeting itself begins somewhere with the idea of the evolution of the stars.
 We are accustomed enough to an evolu- ton of plants anu animals and people, the organic evolution. By this we mean that all the complicated mutitudes of rlants and animals as they exist today have resulted from older, simpler forms, and these from simplled still, and these again from still simpler, down and down to some ancient simple type from which they all have prouauly evolved.
 By. inorganic evolution the scholars mean that the 80 odd elements or kinds of matter as we know them on earth
 today all truly have evolved in the same way like the plants and animals from
 simpler and still simpler types back to some really simple element from which they have all evolved through infinite aeons gone by This inorganic evolution is stupendous beyond all comparison with the evolution of living matter and took | billions and billions of years where tlIe | organic evolution took only millions. | They measure the evolution of inor- 1 Ganic matter by the temperature, and ] say that it proceeds by a running down ] of the temperature. The hottest stars. 1 for example, are the least evolved. ahd
 the coolest stars are composed of a few l gases, about three In the stars of ms 1 dium temperature these gases become re- i placed by metals; these are called me- tallic stars. The coolest stars are called
 carbon stars. In them the gases have disappeared almost entirely and the
 metals are in a more condensed state. Beginning with the hottest stars we find that as the temperature decreases one after another of the chemical elements makes it's appearance until finally they acquire the number that exist in our own i sun. Now, since star has but few ee- l ments when it is hot and many when it 1 is cold, the natural and reasonable ex- 1 planation is that the many have evolved from the few.
 l The geologist looking at the layers of 1 the earth's crust from the lowermost to 1 the highest finds an ever increasing com l pleXity in the remains of life which the l rocks contain. And the astronomer from ] an examination of the stars from the hot l test to the coldest finds also an ever in 1 creasng complexity iri the Kinds of mat 1 ter they contain They both conclude that | there has been an evolution of simpler l forms to more complex. Every-day chem istry shows that the tempera ture finally would sink to about the temperature of the earth and that by that time the mat
 ter would be so complex that it would ex- ist in tens of thousands of forms, as it is on the earth today
 Where does life come in? It certainly did not make it's appearance suddenly out of nothing. Prof. Duncan says that We must look for the element of life in the clements of matter and that the potenti- ality of life should exist in every atom The biologists and geologists say. that life
 originated in the sea. If that be the case
 then the cons tituents of living bodies should be the constituents of the sea water and the air above it.
 This is the exact state of affairs. The clements constituting living beings are