THE DEPTHS OF SPACE
It was only a few years ago that astronomers were unable to measure the distance of objects in the sky more than 100 thousand or so light-years away. But now at the Mt. Wilson Observatory they have photographed spiral nebulae at distances so great that our own system of stars—the Milky Way galaxy—is of minute size in comparison. So remote are some of these that their light has been on the way to us since remote geological ages.
This has been done with the 100-inch telescope, the world’s largest, which is depicted on our cover this week. Seated on the observing platform is Francis G. Pease, in charge of the Mt. Wilson Observatory’s shops, and under whose supervision the great instrument was built. The concave mirror, 100 inches in diameter, that brings the light rays to a focus, was the work of Prof. George W. Ritchey, who has been working for several years at the Paris Observatory to find the best way of making still larger telescopes.
VOLCANOES PUT SALT IN THE SEA
The old question of who put the salt in the sea was referred to Vulcan, mythological patron of volcanoes, by Dr. E. G. Zies of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who attributed some of the chlorine content of the oceans to the outpourings of hydrochloric acid gases from fumarolic areas, such as the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska. The hydrochloric acid gases change to salt in contact with sodium mineral content of the rocks and water, just as the acid contents of the stomach produce salt when they come in contact with soda or baking powder.
These minor volcanoes and other eruptions also belch forth considerable quantities of hydrofluoric acid gas. This is the acid that will etch glass. To it is due the fluorine content of the sea. Recently, the sea was discovered to be a veritable mine of fluorine, and a floating chemical plant was placed aboard a ship to extract this valuable chemical from the seawater. Dr. Zies declared that so much fluorine is sent down to the sea that some unknown chemical mechanism must be at work to precipitate most of it to the submarine rock floor.
COSMIC RAYS MAY CAUSE EVOLUTION
Cosmic rays may be the causes of evolution as well as the messengers of the creation of matter in the depths of space. So Prof. H. J. Muller of the University of Texas suggested when he announced to the National Academy of Sciences the most recent steps in his revolutionary experiments with X-rays as man-controlled tools for the making of new species out of old.
The mutations, or evolutional jumps, which Prof. Muller produces by the thousands with his X-rays, also occur in nature in smaller numbers, apparently spontaneously. It has been suggested, Prof. Muller said, that even these spontaneous mutations may be due to natural radiations resembling X-rays, which are found almost everywhere, though their force is usually rather feeble. Traces of radium in soil or water, and the larger amounts of weaker but more abundant radioactive elements which are present on earth, give off X-rays and other radiations of the same class. And the cosmic rays from the heavens, which Dr. R. A. Millikan announced as signals of matter’s creation, are also possible shifters and rearrangers of the minute building-block genes in the germinal cells.