From the April 6, 1929 issue
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A model of an oil field, showing how an oil well is drilled, how one already bored is pumped, and how the various strata of the earth between the surface and the oil deposit thousands of feet below are arranged, has just been placed on exhibition in the department of geology at Field Museum of Natural History, and is shown on our cover. The model represents part of the oil field at Lawrenceville, Illinois. To insure accuracy in every detail, Henry W. Nichols, associate curator of geology, who supervised the construction of the model, went to Lawrenceville and made field studies and notes before the model was built. The model shows the subterranean strata in which the oil was made by nature during thousands of years through the decomposition of fossils, and still lower the oilsands where the oil floats on salt water along a fold of the rock shaped like an inverted trough. Also represented is the space above the oil surface, filled with natural gas. UNIVERSE DYING UNLESS MATTER CREATED Creation of matter in some outlying part of the universe, by some process of which we have no inkling, is necessary or else the universe will return to the condition described in Genesis, "without form, and void." This is the opinion of Dr. Walter S. Adams, director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It is based on modern conceptions of the source of energy in stars, which suppose that their matter is being transformed to energy. Eventually, unless some such process exists, all the matter in the universe would be transformed. Ordinary sources of energy are entirely inadequate for the stars, said Dr. Adams. Transmutation of elements, in which the electrons and nuclei of the atoms are redistributed into forms involving less energy, is one possible method. "If, in this process, several atoms of the simplest of all elements, hydrogen, were to be combined to form one atom of a more complex element, about 0.008 of the mass of each atom would be lost in the change and would be released in the form of energy," said Dr. Adams. AZTEC TREASURES FROM MEXICAN PYRAMID Earthenware pots containing charred human bones, together with ornaments of gold, obsidian, and polished stone, and dozens of fine obsidian arrow heads and knives, have just been unearthed on the west or main side of the Aztec pyramid at Tenayuca, near Mexico City. The pyramid proper has been completely excavated by the Mexican Direction of Archaeology and restoration has been carried as far as knowledge permits, but in clearing the platform at the foot of the west pyramid face where great double stairways ascend the structure, three additional steps were discovered leading down to a still lower level. It was in the earth at the bottom of these new stairs that the funeral pots were found. |
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