Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-03-26
Cosmos Club Hears Address
by Physicist of Bureau
of Standards.
MADE FUTILE ATTEMPT
TO PROVE IDEA WRONG
Complicated Equations Offer Sim.
plest Explanation Of Phenom-
ena, He Says.
BY THOMAS n. HENRY.

arises In efforts 10 picture the Welr0ly
unreal universe postulated by the the
cries Of Albert Einstein. DR.. Paul Heyl,
physicist of the Bureau of Standards,
explained to the Cosmos Club last
night.
1t is jim their apparent contradiction
of common sense and habits of thought,
DR.. Heyl said, that Einstein's concepts
of the structure of the universe have
aroused most opposition and he warned
against allowing these barriers to stand
before the weight of scientific expert
ment.
He himself. DR.. Heyl said. had been
for seven years a skeptic and had made
one futile effort to prove Einstein
wrong, but finally was willing to admit
that the RELATIVELY theory, complicated
as 1t is, offers the simplest explanation
of observed phenomena.
Human Mind Commented Upon.
The human mind, ne pointed out, is
predisposed to considering time and
space as separate entities. The former
Is looked upon as stationary thing in
which one can move in all directions,
while the latter Is moving like NOV
ing platform on which every one Is
riding, but which Is beyond control.
The challenge to this conception offered
by Einstein depends upon factors difi-
cult OF observation because they only
affect noticeably objects moving at APP
proximately 200 miles a second, the
speed OF light.
He offered the analogy of two plat
forms, one stationary and the. other
moving past it at the speed of light.
On the stationary platform is. an OBJ
server and on the moving platform Is a
clock and a circle. To the observer,
the circle seems straight line and the
clock stopped. If there were an OBJ
server on the moving platform he would
see the same things on the stationary
platform. The Einstein explanation is
not that the mechanism OF the clocks
are changed, but that time itself, indie
pendent Of all mechanisms. changes its
rate on a moving system.
Time No Longer Independent.
Time, in this concept, no longer is
independent Of its position In space,
but is directly dependent on 1t. reyo-
lutionary as the idea may be in the
light of common sense and hereditary
modes of thought. The now universal
ly accepted physical law OF the trans
formation of energy into heat, he said,
for many years was rejected by many
because they believed 1t was opposed to
common sense. Now its rejection would
be opposed to common sense.
The Einstein theory, DIR. Heyl said,
came as an attempt to explain the
serious flaws in physical theories which
had cropped out early in the present
century. Perhaps the most notable OF
these was revealed by the famous
Nicholson Morley experiment. which
earth's movement through space by the
against It.
This gave no result and showed that
something had broken down between the
sciences Of mechanics and optics. Three
or four other experiments gave the
same results, Heyl said The Einstein
theory explained this by postulating
different standards Of measurement ac-
cording to the position and rate Of
motion Of the observer.
Gravitation's Power Enters.
Up to this time, he said, gravitation
had been universally accepted as an
attraction existing between masses
which followed exact laws, but which
could not be explained. The nearest
analogy was with electricity and mag
Of attraction. But electro magnetic at
traction could be cut off by placing a
screen In its path, whereas no screen
had any effect on gravitation. The
mutual attraction Of two bodies re-
manned the same, regardless Of what
was placed between them.
EinStein, he explained, pointed to a
somewhat similar condition In respect
to centrifugal force. Equal masses re-
volving at equal radii from a common
center are thrown off with equal force,
which might indicate a repulsive power
In the center. But physicists long since
had explained this phenomenon as a
property of the bodies themselves with
out requiring any propulsion. Enstein
gave similar explanation for gravi-
tation-a property of the bodies them
selves rather than Of an attractive force
between them.
Thus the orbit of the earth's motion
around the sum- he pointed out, could
be explained as due to the fact that
space itself became curved in the neigh
borhood of the earth, which was forced
to follow the curves of this space. which
acted as surface Of restraint" In
order to sustain this concept Einstein
was obliged to 60 outside Of human ex-
perience and postulate five-dimen-
sional universe, which IL Is impossible
to visualize.
Met Experimental Tests.
Weird as were the Einstein concep-
tons. DIR. Heyl said, they were entitled
to the test of experiment and met this
test. One of these was concerned with
the irregularities in the orbit of the
planet Mercury, which varied widely
from the path 1t should have followed
according to the law of gravity. The
variation was SO great that the late
Prof. Asaph Hall and Simon Newcombe
Of the Naval Observatory. proposed q
slight change In the law of gravity it
self. Even with this change the law
did not At. The Einstein theory eX-
planned perfectly.
The observations Of approximately
10 eclipse expeditions, DR.. Heyl said,
have sustained Einstein's contention
on the bending of light from star
passing In the neighborhood of a great
mass like the sun-that is, following the
curvature of space created by the pres
ence of the sun.
Last of Proof Apparently Here.
The last of the three proofs asked by
Einstein, he said, apparently has been
provided. This was that all very dark
lines In the spectrum of the sun should
be shifted very slightly to the right.
1t was difficult to determine whether
this actually happened because the
measurements We're so delicate and