Evening star., 1937-04-30
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

By THOMAS r. HENRY.
The whole vastness OF creation
the whirling galaxies, the flaming
stars, the hurtling supergalaxies-
may be melting away into primaeval,
for1nless darkness.
An hypothesis that light continu-
ously is losing energy in its bullet
like flight through space was ad-
vanced by Dr. Arthur Haas of the
University of Notre Dame before the
American Physical Society meeting
at the Bureau Of Standards today.
1t was offered as an alternative
explanation of the outstanding para
dox of modern astronomy. This is
the red shift" At unimaginable dis
tances beyond the utmost limits of
the 30,000,0O0, ,0eO-star Milky Way
galaxy, of which the solar system is
an inf1nitesimal part-distances
which light moving at approximately
10000 miles second requires mil
lions of years to cross-are millions
of other aggregations of stars con-
stituting galaxies of the same order
Of magnitude.
Red Shift of Light.
The spectra of the light from
these far-aWay galaXies as received
on the earth shows strange thing.
The farther away they are the more
the lines of the Spectra are shifted
toward the red or longer wave lengths.
1t has been determined that this is
exactly what would happen when a
source of light was moving at a tre-
mendous speed away from the OBJ
server. This is so well established
that from the amount of the red
shift one can calculate the speed of
outward motion. 1t was determined
that the more distant the outer galaxy
the greater the red shift-that is,
the greater the speed of outward
motion
II this Interpretation is accepted,
the concept of creation rapidly ex-
panding in size into the dark depths
of nothingness is inescapable. 1t
might be expanding like a soap bub-
bic or like the flying fragments of
an exploding bomb.
But there is another possible ex-
PLANTATION, DR.. Haas stressed before
the physicists today. The light it
self may actually be changing it's
wave length. 1t may be a general
law that moving radiation changes
over unimaginably long periods-from
ultra violet to blue to green to yellow
TO red to infra-red to long radio
waves and finally into-this he
less darkness and coldness, a sort of
primeval ether, out of which all things
are born again.
Change in Loss of Energy.
Radiation-visible light and all
other kinds-is made up of units
known as photons. A photon is a
unit Of energy. 1t is not exactly a
particle nor exactly an immaterial
waive, but something of combination
of the two. The more energy the
shorter the wave length, covering the
whole range of the spectrum. Take
enough energy out of blue light. for
example, and it will become green
light. Take enough out of yellow light
and it will become red light.
There is no experimental evidence
that this actually happens, but If it
is assumed to happen at constant
rate, DR.. Haas pointed out, the
strange phenomenon of the red shift"
can be explained satisfactorily with
out resorting to the hypothesis of an
exploding or bubble-expanding uni
verse.
The end result may be no happier,
however. DR.. Haas calculations call
for loss of energy of IL hundredth
trillionth trillionth trillionth of a
millionth of an erg of energy-an
erg is an almost infinitely minute
amount-per photon per vibration,
and for every photon of visible light
there are trillions of vibrations a
second 1t would require at this rate
green photon to change into a yellow
photon.
Longer Wave Length.
The theory calls for the assumption
that each photon, regardless of wave
length or the amount of energy it
originally contains, give OF exactly
the same amount Of energy at each
vibration. AS the loss Of energy
process goes down the scale to longer
and longer wave lengths it is vastly
accelerated, because there are not so
many vibrations second
Finally, far beyond the range Of
the longest radio waves now known,
point might be reached where there
would be only one energy element
left. But there is an end to all things,
and eventually the photon is left
without any energy at all. 1t was
nothing but energy in the first place,
so it is finally-nothing.
But energy itself is reality. What
would become of these unimaginable
minute packages of energy, the small
est things ever conceived, which have
been lost in the transformation of
light into nothing? Here, DR.. Haas
explained in an interview, it becomes
matter Of purely metaphysical spec