Читать книгу The Story of Evolution - Joseph McCabe - Страница 7

* A theory has been advanced by some physicists that there

is evidence of a beginning. WITHIN OUR EXPERIENCE energy is

being converted into heat more abundantly than heat is being

converted into other energy. This would hold out a prospect

of a paralysed universe, and that stage would have been

reached long ago if the system had not had a definite

beginning. But what knowledge have we of conversions of

energy in remote regions of space, in the depths of stars or

nebulae, or in the sub-material world of which we have just

caught a glimpse? Roundly, none. The speculation is

worthless.

One point only need be mentioned in conclusion. Do we anywhere perceive the evolution of the material elements out of electrons, just as we perceive the devolution, or disintegration, of atoms into electrons? There is good ground for thinking that we do. The subject will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. In brief, the spectroscope, which examines the light of distant stars and discovers what chemical elements emitted it, finds matter, in the hottest stars, in an unusual condition, and seems to show the elements successively emerging from their fierce alchemy. Sir J. Norman Lockyer has for many years conducted a special investigation of the subject at the Solar Physics Observatory, and he declares that we can trace the evolution of the elements out of the fiery chaos of the young star. The lightest gases emerge first, the metals later, and in a special form. But here we pass once more from Lilliputia to Brobdingnagia, and must first explain the making of the star itself.