Worlds in the making: The evolution of the universeArrhenius, Svante
Science
Worlds in the making: The evolution of the universe
Arrhenius, Svante
Cosmogony
[Footnote 18: The presence of carbon bands in the spectrum
need not be taken as a mark of low temperature. Crew and Hale
have observed that these bands gradually vanished from an arc
spectrum as the temperature was lowered by decreasing the
current intensity.]
Finally a crust will form. The star is extinct.
VII
THE NEBULAR AND THE SOLAR STATES
We will now proceed to a more intimate consideration of the chemical
and physical conditions which probably characterize the nebulæ in
distinction from the suns. These properties differ in many respects
essentially from those which we are accustomed to associate with matter
as investigated by us, which may, from this point of view, be styled
relatively concentrated.
The differences must be fundamental. For the motto of Clausius, which
comprises the sum of our knowledge of the nature of heat, cannot apply
to nebulæ. This motto reads:
“The energy of the universe is constant. The entropy of the
universe tends to a maximum.”
Everybody understands what is meant by energy. We know energy in
many forms. The most important are: energy of position (a heavy body
has larger energy by virtue of its having been raised to a certain
height above the surface of the earth than when it is lying on the
surface); energy of motion (a discharged rifle-bullet has an energy
which is proportional to the mass of the bullet and to the square of
its velocity); energy of heat, which is regarded as the energy of the
motion of the smallest particles of a body; electrical energy, such as
can, for instance, be stored in an accumulator battery, and which,
like all other modifications of energy, may be converted into energy of
heat; and chemical energy, such as is displayed by a mixture of eight
grammes of oxygen with one gramme of hydrogen, which can be transformed
into water under a strong evolution of heat. When we say that the
energy of a system to which energy is not imparted from outside is
constant, we merely mean that the different forms of energy of the
separate parts of this system may be transformed into other forms of
energy, but that the sum total of all the energies must always remain
unchanged. According to Clausius this law is valid throughout the
infinite space of the universe.
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