Evening star., 1951-08-27
Sky's Full Of Stors
Choking to Death
Rate Hydrogen Is Exhausted
Determines Length Of Life
By Thomos R. Henry

By Thomas R. Henry
The heavens are full Of stars that are
choking to death.
This thesis has been reported by DR..
George Gamov of George Washington
University in the official journal Of
the British Association for the Advance
ment of Science.
Prof. Gamov and group Of colleagues
now are working out its implications for
astronomy on the great electrical COM
putting machines Of the Los Alamos
laboratory Of the Atomic Energy Com
mission.
It Is agreed generally, DR.. Gamov says.
that the greater part of the heat and
light Of any star is due to the transmuta-
ton OF hydrogen into heliuin in the in
tense heat inside the star. This Is the
same way Of producing energy as is
envisioned for the hydrogen bomb.
About half the material Of any star is
hydrogen, the mother gas" of creation.
The rate at which this hydrogen is
used up in the transmutation process
determines the life of the star. It can
be calculated, for example, that the
sun viii have life span of about 50,-
O00, 100000 years. Thus far it has
existed only about 5000, 900 900 years.
It is fairly typical Of most Milky Way
stars known to astronomers.
The larger star, the greater its
radiation and the faster 1t consumes
hydrogen.
The skies contain great numbers Of
queer stars" Some are red giants,
thousands Of times bigger than the sun.
Others are white dwarfs, extremely hot
and weighing thousands of tons per
cubic inch. Still others are exploding
stars. All these can be poStulated DR..
Gamov says In the report to the British
journal, as stars whose hydrogen has
been exhausted, or is nearly exhausted,
and which now are in their death
throes.
Stars Out Of Sequence.
They do not fit into any orderly
sequence of stars. Preliminary calcula-
tionS. DR.. Gamov says. indicate that
hydrogen exhaustion could lead to any
OF the queer forms. They ane, he be-
lieves. for the most part younger than
the sun.
The vast majority Of stars, it now is
supposed, came into existence at ap-
proximately the same time and lead nor
NAL lives at about the same rate. Only
those which start out three or four times
heavier than the sun lead the fast
lives" which bring about the choking
deaths.
A group of extremely potent drugs
against tuberculosis, which may consti-
tute new family of germ killers, is
being prepared in England
They all are variations of patented
American cleansing agent, in itself quite
poisonous. whose effect against the
tuberculosis organism was discovered by
accident. DR.. j. w. Cornforth of the
National Institute for Medical Research
and his colleagues started working on
minor changes in the chemical formula
and weighing the poisoning against the
curative effects.
The materials are described as "reac-
tions Of ethylene oxide with certain
products of formaldehyde
The effects OF intravenous injections
Of some of these materials on mice ex-
perimentally infected with tuberculosis
have been remarkable, DR.. Cornforth re-
ports. Infections strong enough to kill
untreated animals in about three weeks
produced only small LESSONS in treated
mice.
Germs Become Immune.
These effects are described as about
equal to those of streptomycin, the
mould secretion which q few years ago
was widely believed to be the long,
awaited tuberculosis remedy. 1t has
proved. In general, quite disappointing
due to strange circumStance-namely
that germs soon developed immunity
to it.
All sorts of efforts have been made
to combine streptomycin with other sub
stances which would kill the resistant
organisms. For the most part these
auxiliary materials have been quite
poisonous.
An advantage Of the new British ma
terials is that they apparently can DO
prepared with various degrees of tox.
icity, according to DR.. Cornforth's report.
The tuberculosis germ is one Of the
most difficult to attack with any drug.
1t is surrounded by fatty coat, sort
of protective. armor. This appears COM
pletely resistant, for example, to the
Sulfa drugs.
Thus far the effect of the new family
of chemicals against other disease
causing organisms has not been tested.
The British workers now are trying to
produce less toxic forms with which ex-
periments can be tried on human beings.