The energy radiated at the surface of the sun is estimated at 7,000 horse power to the square foot, and if the sun was a mass of coal, it would have to be consumed in 5,000 years in order to supply it, and in 5,000 years would have to cool down to 9,000 degrees, C. If the nebular hypothesis be received, the contraction would supply the loss for 7,000 years before the temperature would fall 1 degree, C.
Incomprehensible as this force is, it is constantly diminishing, and although the projection of meteors and hypothetical cosmical bodies may prolong its action, the time must come when all its energy will be dissipated into space; all bodies will have the same temperature, and as there is no other source of energy, physical and vital phenomena will cease, and the universe, bereft of living beings, will itself be dead.
A Dead World.—According to the most advanced views at present entertained, this is the end of the career of the universe.
Balfour Stewart endorses this conclusion by saying: “We are induced to generalize still further, and regard not only our own system, but the whole material universe, when viewed with respect to serviceable energy, as essentially evanescent, and as embracing a succession of physical events which can not go on forever as they are.”
In stronger language Mr. Pickering says: “The final result, therefore, would be that all bodies would assume the same temperature, there would be no further source of energy; physical phenomena would cease, and the physical universe would be dead. Such, at least, is the present view of this stupendous question.”
In explanation of the origin of this energy, and the reason for its loss, Mr. Stewart further says: “It is supposed that these particles originally existed at a great distance from each other, and that, being endowed with force of gravitation, they have gradually come together; while in this process heat has been generated, just as if a stone were dropped from the top of a cliff toward the earth.”
Thus the universe would become an equally heated mass, utterly worthless as far as the work of production is concerned, since such production depends on difference of temperature.
In other words, the universe becomes dead matter, wholly incapable of supporting life, and so far as present science gives us any information, must remain forever at rest.
The fact that such a conclusion has been reached should cause us to pause in doubt of the correctness of the data leading thereto. It would be more plausible were it shown how, at the end of the great cycle, there was renewal of the lost energy, and return to the nebulous beginning. Causation moves in cycles, and the most alarming perturbations are balanced by forces operating in other directions, so that the result is the preservation of order. Planets swing wide of their orbits for a million years, getting further and further away, yet the time comes when they return on a pathway carrying them as wide on the other side.
This latest view of the universe by scientific thought, however plausible its argument, or apparently logical its results, is proven by the very logic of those results to be defective.