Cosmic Radioactivity and the Age of the Universe,1900–1930

Burchfield Joe D. , Lord Kelvin and the age of the Earth (London, 1975).

Holmes Arthur , The age of the Earth (New York, 1913), 120. On Holmes and his important work in geology and geophysics, see Lewis Cherry L. E. , The dating game: One man's search for the age of the Earth (Cambridge, 2000), and idem, “Arthur Holmes' vision of a geological timescale”, in Lewis C. L. E. Knell S. J. (eds), The age of the Earth: From 4004 BC to AD 2002 (London, 2001), 121–38.

The key argument is mentioned in Kragh H. , Matter and spirit in the universe: Scientific and religious preludes to modern cosmology (London, 2004), 192.

Tait Peter G. , [address by president of the mathematics and physics section], Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1871, 1–8, p. 6.

The literature on the entropic creation argument is limited. See Landsberg Peter T. , “From entropy to God?”, in Martinàs Katalin Ropolyi László Szegedi Peter (eds), Thermodynamics: History and philosophy (Singapore, 1991), 379–403; Kragh , Matter and spirit in the universe (ref. 3); and Elizabeth R. Neswald, Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz: Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie 1850–1915 (Berlin, 2006).

See Schnippenkötter Josef , Das Entropiegesetz: Seine physikalische und seine philosophische und apologetische Bedeutung (Essen, 1920) for a careful survey of the philosophical and theological aspects of the law of entropy increase. For a more recent but less detailed survey, see Seeger Raymond J. , “On humanistic aspects of entropy”, Physis, ix (1969), 1969–34. See also Kragh H. , “From entropy to a divinely created universe: A forgotten theme in the history of science and theology”, in Kragh H. (ed.), Theology and science: Issues for future dialogue (Aarhus, 2006), 61–88.

Young Charles A. , A text-book of general astronomy (Boston, 1893), 524–5. The reference is to 2 Peter 3:13.

E.g., Rutherford Ernest , Radioactive transformations (Cambridge, 1906), 196–218; Curie Marie , Traité de radioactivité (2 vols, Paris, 1910), ii, 467–535; Rutherford E. , Radioactive substances and their radiations (Cambridge, 1913), 624–56; and Meyer Stefan Schweidler Egon , Radioaktivität (Leipzig, 1927), 545–624. For an interesting survey, see Becker George F. , “Relations of radioactivity to cosmogony and geology”, Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, xix (1908), 1908–45. Radioactivity occupied a part, if only a small one, of the new science of ‘cosmical physics’, an attempt to present a unified picture of geophysics, astrospectroscopy, meteorology, geomagnetism and atmospheric electricity. See Arrhenius Svante , Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik (2 vols, Leipzig, 1903), and Trabert Wilhelm , Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik (Leipzig, 1911).

Kolhörster Werner , Die durchdringende Strahlung in der Atmosphäre (Hamburg, 1924). On the origin of research in cosmic rays, see Xu Qiaozhen Brown Laurie , “The early history of cosmic ray research”, American journal of physics, lv (1987), 1987–33.

Farrington Oliver , “The constitution of meteorites”, Journal of geology, ix (1901), 393–408, 522–32.

Stone S. Bradford , “The origin of the chemical elements”, Journal of physical chemistry, xxxiv (1930), 821–41, p. 827.

This insight was reached principally by Payne Cecilia Russell Henry Norris Unsöld Albrecht Strömgren Bengt , and Eddington Arthur . See Hufbauer Karl , Exploring the Sun: Solar science since Galileo (Baltimore, 1991), 101–6. See also DeVorkin David H. Kenat Ralph , “Quantum physics and the stars II: The abundances of the elements in the atmospheres of the Sun and the stars”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xiv (1983), 1983–222, and DeVorkin D. H. , Henry Norris Russell: Dean of American astronomers (Princeton, 2000), 199–218.

Campbell Norman R. , “The radiation from ordinary materials”, Philosophical magazine, ix (1905–6), 531–44; xi (1906), 206–24.

Rutherford, Radioactive transformations (ref. 8), 217. Rutherford's “general principle” crumbled as radioactivity was further investigated, and it was contradicted by the discovery of superconductivity a few years later. Mercury, tin and lead turned out to be superconductors, whereas platinum, gold and most other metals were ordinary conductors. Physicists and chemists were puzzled as to why only some elements had superconducting properties, and did not form a recognizable pattern in the periodic system. For details, see Dahl Per F. , Superconductivity: Its historical roots and development from mercury to the ceramic oxides (New York, 1992).

Campbell N. R. , Modern electrical theory (Cambridge, 1907), 213.

Crookes William , Modern views of matter: The realisation of a dream (Berlin, 1903), 16. Crookes speculated that the world had originally consisted of a formless collection of electrons (or other elementary particles) out of which atoms had been formed; because of their inbuilt instability the atoms would eventually return to the original state (and perhaps this process of a cosmic cycle would go on endlessly).

See Elster Julius Geitel Hans , “Entdeckungsgeschichte und Grundtatsachen der Radioaktivität”, in Warburg Emil (ed.), Physik (Leipzig, 1915), 478–94, pp. 488–91. Elster and Geitel did not believe in the hypothesis, but would not rule it out either.

See Hufbauer K. , “Astronomers take up the stellar-energy problem”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, xi (1981), 277–303, pp. 280–2.

Wilson W. E. , “Radium and solar energy”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 222; Darwin George H. , “Radioactivity and the age of the Sun”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 496; Hardy W. B. , “Radium and the cosmical time scale”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 548; Strutt Robert J. , “Radium and the Sun's heat”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 572; and Joly John , “Radium and the Sun's heat”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 572.

Soddy Frederick , “Radioactivity”, Annual reports on the progress of chemistry, i (1905), 244–80, p. 277. Reprinted in Soddy F. , Radioactivity and atomic theory, ed. by Trenn Thaddeus J. (London, 1975), 54–90.

Darwin G. H. , [presidential address], Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science , 1905, 3–32, p. 29. See also Rutherford E. , “Radium — The cause of the Earth's heat”, Harper's magazine, February 1905, 390–6, reprinted in Rutherford E. , The collected papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson, ed. by Chadwick James (3 vols, London, 1962), i, 776–85: “There is no direct evidence that radioactive matter exists in the sun, but, from the similarity of the chemical constitution of the sun and earth, its presence is to be expected” (p. 784).

On the early history of helium, see Meadows Arthur J. , Science and controversy: A biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (London, 1972), and Weeks Mary E. , Discovery of the elements (Easton, PA, 1968), 757–64. Evidence for helium as a disintegration product of radioactive change was first found by Ramsay and Soddy in 1903, but it took five more years before the connection was definitely confirmed. Ramsay William Soddy Frederick , “Gases occluded by radium bromide”, Nature, lxviii (1903), 246, and Trenn Thaddeus J. , The self-splitting atom: The history of the Rutherford—Soddy collaboration (London, 1977), 125.

Holmes , Age of the Earth (ref. 2), 116.

Giebeler H. , “Spektroskopischer Beobachtungen der Nova Geminorum 2 am Bonner Refraktor”, Astronomische Nachrichtungen , cxci, no. 4582 (1912), cols 393–402. The eminent spectroscopist Heinrich Kayser suggested a theory of the origin of novae based upon radioactivity: Kayser H. , “Ein Versuch zur Erklärung der neuen Sterne durch radioaktive Prozesse”, Astronomische Nachrichtungen, cxci, no. 4583 (1912), cols 421–6.

Joly J. , “An estimate of the geological age of the Earth”, Scientific transactions of the Royal Dublin Society, ix (1899), 283–8.

Joly J. , “The age of the Earth”, Philosophical magazine, xxii (1911), 357–80. He first made the suggestion in Joly J. , Radioactivity and geology (London, 1909). On Joly, a major player in the debate over the age of the Earth, see Jackson Patrick N. Wyse , “John Joly (1857–1933) and his determinations of the age of the Earth”, in Lewis Knell (eds), The age of the Earth (ref. 2), 107–19.

Holmes , Age of the Earth (ref. 2), 168–9. See also the discussion on radioactivity and geology in Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1915, 432–5. Whether or not the hypothesis of varying decay rates is “unphilosophic”, it was repeated by several physicists later in the century. For example, Pascual Jordan advocated the hypothesis in 1946, in part motivated by a wish to reconcile the age of the Earth and the age of the universe, cf. Kragh, Matter and spirit in the universe (ref. 3), 181. Since then, dozens of hypotheses of varying decay rates have appeared in the physics literature.

Rutherford , Radioactive transformations (ref. 8), 194, and similarly in Rutherford, Radioactive substances and their radiations (ref. 8), 623. Also Becker , “Relations of radioactivity to cosmogony and geology” (ref. 8), found it reasonable to assume that the decay process could be reversed (p. 125).

Curie M. , “Les rayons de Becquerel et le polonium”, Revue generale des sciences pures et appliqués, x (1899), 41–50. See Pais Abraham , “Radioactivity's two early puzzles”, Reviews of modern physics, xlix (1977), 1977–38, and also Kragh H. , “The origin of radioactivity: From solvable problem to unsolved non-problem”, Archive for history of exact sciences, l (1997), 1997–58.

Crookes W. , [presidential address], Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science , 1898, 4–38, pp. 26–27. The part of his address that concerned radioactivity was translated into French as Crookes W. , “Sur la source de l'énergie dans les corps radio-actifs”, Comptes rendus, cxxviii (1899), 1899–8. Crookes soon changed his view. On his conception of radioactivity, see Sinclair S. B. , “Crookes and radioactivity: From inorganic evolution to atomic transformation”, Ambix, xxxii (1985), 1985–31.

Curie M. , “Les nouvelles substances radioactives”, Revue de science, xiv (1900), 65–75, reprinted in Curie M. , Oeuvres de Marie Sklodowska Curie, ed. by Curie Irène Joliot (Warsaw, 1954), 95–105, p. 105. See also Brunhes Bernard , La dégradation de l'énergie (Paris, 1908), 207–8.

Travers Morris W. , A life of Sir William Ramsay (London, 1956), 252. See also Hammer William J. , Radium and other radioactive substances (New York, 1903), 18. On Kelvin's conception of radioactivity, see Kragh , “The origin of radioactivity” (ref. 29).

Chwolson Oreste D. , Hegel, Haeckel, Kossuth und das zwölfte Gebot (Braunschweig, 1908), 76.

Rutherford , “Radium — The cause of the Earth's heat” (ref. 21), 396.

Haas A. E. , Der erste Quantenansatz für das Atom (Stuttgart, 1966), with a biographical introduction by Armin Hermann.

Haas Arthur E. , “Die Physik und das kosmologische Problem”, Archiv für systematische Philosophie, xiii (1907), 511–25.

Haas A. E. , “Ist die Welt in Raum und Zeit unendlich?”, Archiv für systematische Philosophie, xviii (1912), 167–84, pp. 183–4.

Nys Désiré , La notion de temps (Paris, 1913), 190–3. Nys, who had studied chemistry under Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig, was professor at the Catholic University in Louvain. He taught courses in chemistry and cosmology at the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie. The book was vol. vii of his Cours de philosophie.

Becher Erich , Weltgebäude, Weltgesetze, Weltentwicklung (Berlin, 1915), 279–81.

Meyer S. Schweidler E. , “Radioaktive Strahlungen und Umwandlungen”, in Warburg (ed.), Physik (ref. 17), 495–513, pp. 512–13. A similar exposition appeared in Becher, Weltgebäude (ref. 39), 280–1.

Nernst Walther , Das Weltgebäude im Lichte der neueren Forschung (Berlin, 1921), 1. Boltzmann's lecture, in which he denied the possibility of avoiding the heat death, was published in Boltzmann L. , Populäre Schriften (Leipzig, 1905), 25–50 (p. 33).

Nernst W. , “Zur neueren Entwicklung der Thermodynamik”, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft deutscher Naturforscher und Ärtzte, i (1912), 100–16, pp. 105–6.

LeBon Gustave G. , The evolution of matter (New York, 1907). Berny Adalbert , “Über kosmische Entwicklung”, Das Weltall, xiii (1913), 1913–24.

Soddy F. , “Radioactivity”, Annual reports on the progress of chemistry, iii (1907), 333–65, p. 358. Reprinted in Soddy, Radioactivity and atomic theory (ref. 20), 113–45.

Soddy F. , The interpretation of radium (London, 1908), 241–2.

Ibid., 189. On Soddy and his lifelong fascination by cyclic processes, see Sclove Richard E. , “From alchemy to atomic war: Frederic Soddy's ‘technology assessment’ of atomic energy, 1900–1915”, Science, technology, & human values, xiv (1989), 163–94.

Holmes , Age of the Earth (ref. 2), 121. Spencer Herbert , First principles (London, 1911; first pub. 1862), 550.

Köhler Oswald , Weltschöpfung und Weltuntergang (Stuttgart, 1895), 380. Haeckel Ernst , Die Welträtsel (Bonn, 1901; first edn 1899), 285. Others who explicitly used the metaphor of the universe's being a perpetuum mobile included Otto Caspari, Hans Vaihinger, Friedrich Engels and Friedrich Nietzsche (none of whom was a scientist).

LeBon , The evolution of matter (ref. 43). Scheffler H. , Das Wesen der Ursubstanz, die Weltschöpfung und Entstehung des Lebens enthüllt durch die Radioaktivität (Leipzig, 1906). See also Tunzelmann Georg W. , A treatise on electrical theory and the problem of the universe (London 1910).

Hufbauer , “Astronomers take up the stellar-energy problem” (ref. 18).

Eddington Arthur S. , “The borderland of astronomy and geology”, Nature, cxi (1923), 18–21, p. 19.

See Kragh , Matter and spirit in the universe (ref. 3), 105, and Stanley Matthew , Practical mystic: Religion, science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago, 2007).

Nernst W. , “Physico-chemical considerations in astrophysics”, Journal of the Franklin Institute, ccvi (1928), 135–42, p. 137. On Nernst's cosmology and its relationship to the cosmological views of MacMillan W. Millikan R. , see Kragh H. , “Cosmology between the wars: The Nernst—MacMillan alternative”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxvi (1995), 1995–115. For a contemporary view, see Günther Paul , “Die kosmologischen Betrachtungen von Nernst”, Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie, xxxvii (1924), 1924–7. See also Kolhörster , Die durchdringende Strahlung (ref. 9), 66–67, who expressed sympathy for Nernst's ideas.

Nernst , “Physico-chemical considerations in astrophysics” (ref. 53), 141.

MacMillan W. , review of Alexandre Veronnet, Constitution et évolution de l'univers (Paris, 1926), in The astrophysical journal, lxvi (1927), 1927–43.

Rutherford E. , “The electrical structure of matter”, Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science , 1923, 1–24, p. 20. This paper is not reproduced in Rutherford, Collected papers (ref. 21).

Strutt R. J. , “Some problems of cosmical physics”, Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1929, 49.

Lewis Gilbert N. , “The chemistry of the stars and the evolution of radioactive substances”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xxxiv (1922), 310–19, pp. 318–19.

Lewis G. N. , “The symmetry of time in physics”, Science, lxxi (1930), 569–77.

Jeans J. , “The evolution of stars”, Nature, cxvii (1926), 18–21, p. 21. On Jeans's conception of stellar energy and cosmic rays, see De Maria Michelangelo Russo Arturo , “Cosmic rays and cosmological speculations in the 1920s: The debate between Jeans and Millikan”, in Bertotti Bruno (eds), Modern cosmology in retrospect (Cambridge, 1990), 401–9.

Jeans J. , “The physics of the universe”, Nature, cxxii (1928), 689–700, p. 699. Based on the first Herbert Willis Memorial Lecture, delivered on 30 October 1928.

Ibid., 691. Jeans took the half-lives of uranium-238 and thorium-232 to be 5 billion years and 15 billion years, respectively. The present values are 4.5 billion years and 14 billion years.

Ibid., 696.

Jeans J. , The universe around us (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1930), 336, preface dated 2 August 1930. The age of the universe obtained on the basis of relativistic cosmology (the Hubble time) was about 2 × 10⁹ years. Jeans based his figure on his theory of the condensation of nebulae to form stars, from which followed the so-called long time-scale of about 10¹³ years. See Brush Stephen G. , “Is the Earth too old? The impact of geochronology on cosmology, 1929–1952”, in Lewis Knell (eds), The age of the Earth (ref. 2), 157–75.

Jeans J. , The mysterious universe (Cambridge, 1930), 182. The book was based on the Rede Lecture delivered in November 1930.

Lemaître Georges , “The beginning of the world from the point of view of quantum theory”, Nature, cxxvii (1931), 706.

Lemaître G. , “The cosmological constant”, in Schilpp Paul A. (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist (New York, 1949), 437–56, p. 452. A detailed examination of Lemaître's motives for proposing his primeval-atom model of the universe is presented in H. Kragh and Dominique Lambert, “The context of discovery: Lemaître and the origin of the primeval-atom universe”, Annals of science (forthcoming, 2007).

Lemaître G. , “L'expansion de l'espace”, Revues des questions scientifiques, xvii (1931), 391–410. Reprinted in Lemaître G. , L'hypothèse de l'atome primitif: Essai de cosmogonie (Neuchâtel, 1946), 67–92.

Lemaître G. , [untitled], Nature, cxxviii (1931), 704–6, p. 705.

Ibid. For Lemaître's inspiration from Jeans, see Kragh Lambert , “The context of discovery” (ref. 67).