Page:Creation by Evolution (1928).djvu/427

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CUMULATIVE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION

The question naturally arises whether this process of atomic degradation is a one-way process, destined in the end to reduce all matter to its simplest form. The most recent discoveries of physicists seem to answer this question in the negative. There is a well-defined belief among experts in these matters that processes the reverse of those described above, involving a synthesis of simpler forms of matter into more complex, are going on out in the remotest interstellar spaces. Professor Millikan has detected vibrations emanating from these outer spaces—vibrations whose frequency is not even approached by any known earthly or solar phenomena—that are interpreted as evidences of immensely energetic synthetic processes involving the return of matter from its state of ultimate disintegration to conditions of integration and complexity. These observations seem to indicate that atomic evolution, like other phases of evolution, is rhythmic and orderly. Such a rhythm would seem to have no beginning and no ending. Perhaps our ideas of beginnings and endings are due merely to the limited functioning of our human brain mechanism.

In the hands of the expert the spectroscope is seemingly a magical instrument. By its help he can reach out and measure the distances and the diameters of the remotest stars, and even of the outer galaxies; he can use it as a long-range thermometer with which he can read the temperatures of the most distant suns; with it as a speedometer he can calculate the velocity of any of the heavenly bodies; and by its aid he can determine the chemical composition of the external parts of the suns almost as accurately as if he had them in his laboratory.

Spectroscopic analysis indicates that there is an orderly and systematic progression in the temperature and composition of the suns from the giants, or young suns, to the dwarfs,

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