Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-09-23

heavens with telescope but little better
than modern opera glass, found that
| other worlds had moons rotating round
them, and began making observations
| which led Kepler and Newton to dis
over the fundamental laws which con-
troll the movement Of the heavenly
bodies.
1t was hard for the people of those
| days t. believe that the earth was not
the center of the universe and that the
| movement of the planets was not in per-
feet circles but in irregular ellipses. but
| this did not perturb Newton or Kepler
They kept their reverenceS, though the
earth's position became unimportant in
the galaxy of larger celestial bodies
Newton had no doubts that he had a
soul. And when PaSteur. studying the
universe of the infinitely little, found the
germs which cause plaques in silkworms
and animals and human beings, he re-
garded these facts only as proof OF the
all-powerful wisdom which is above us,
and s:rded up his soul to struggle
against personal illness and the incom-
petence and animosity of the small
minds around him; to struggle on until
finally he had mastered the disease ny
drophobia.
Faith Not Shaken.
Nor has the study of the fragments
of the atom shaken the faith of Mill
ken. He has not heSitated to weigh
that which no balance, however deli
cate, could estimate, to determine the
electrical charge of an electrOn, frag-
ment of matter so small that perhaps 1t
will always be invisible. And now, weary
perhaps for the moment of the infini-
tesimal, he has turned to the vast ranges
nf int matters
which his laboratory could not answer.
The fact that in interstellar space there
is going on a continual construction OF
what we call elements from simpler
fragments and that during this process
invisible coSmic rays are given out which
finally reach the earth, though from an
almost infinite distance, so that the
matter which gives off the rays was
really created thousands of years before
man began to think-this fact has not
weakened Millikens faith, it has only
increased it.
Think of the extraordinary discoveries
of modern astronomical science which
enable us to analyZe the composition of
the distant stars as accurately as a
piece of steel can be aSsayed in the
laboratory. Pupin and Sir Oliver Lodge,
great scientists as they are in the cleo
trical field, have not failed to find God.
remember that shortly after Nine.
Curie isolated radium, a well known
physicist came to me and said: This
newly discovered substance gives off
heat-that means all the laws of
physics are wrong and my life work has
been thrown away" He never did any,
thing worth while after that, so great
was his disappointment.
Mnoo Curi0,S Activities
But Nine. Curie went to work to
investigate the question entirely without
emotions. She had not lost faith in
her science and faith in her SOUL First
she found out how much heat radium
gave off. and then that it gave it off
constantly at the same rate and that
nothing that she could do would make
the heat come off any faster or any
slower. She knew then that there must
be some novel change going on in this
radium.
Then Rutherford and others took up
the task, showed that rays were given
off from radium, and finally showed
that an actual gas was procured, and
that this gas was one which had been
first discovered in the sun and recently
found in our own atmosphere. They
counted these gas particles which came
from the radium by one of the most
ingenious pieces of apparatus ever in
vented, and then an Englishman work.
ing quietly in a laboratory in Cam
bridge. showed that these particles could
be made visible as they bumped around
the molecules of the air in a glass tube.
Thus for the first time it was proved
that an atom could break up into frag-
ments which could be made visible.
So the work went on until it was