Some Books of the Week
Dn. .TiE,.,NNS, one_ of pis most daring yet cautious of modern astronomers, ha h given us an excellent book in Astronomy and Cosmogony (Cambridge University Press, 31s. 6d.). One has only to summon up courage to plunge into the amazing formulae and equations illustrating the text of this survey of the achievements of modern astronomy to be awestricken by the almost unconscious suggestions as to the rightness of ancient orthodoxy. After a long and close mathematical argument on the origin of the Galactic Universe (that is, the System of the Milky Way, which comprises our Earth and all the heavens which the naked eye beholds), Dr. Jeans sums up in the following words : "There is no longer any evidence that any star is more than about 10" year-8 old, and, indeed, a good many lines of evidence converge in indicating ages of the order of from five to ten million million years for the main mass of the stars, these ages being measured from the time at which the stars first condensed out of the parent nebula. The atoms of the parent nebula must have ages which are at least of the same order of magni- tude, and as all the nebulae in the sky may be of the same age, there is no reason against supposing that the whole universe may have been created, or come into being, at the same instant." This book tells the story of the trend of matter from mind back into mind. "What is the meaning," asks Dr. Jeans, "if any there be which is intelligible to us, of the vast accumulations of matter which appear, on our present interpretations of space and time, to have been created only in order that they may destroy themselves ? Are they perchance only a dream, while we are braincells in the mind of the dreamer ? " And Dr. Jeans stops one step short of the mystic, for he dares to offer no answer to that question which is the final fruit of the magnificent growth of astro- physical research.
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