The Uniform Abundance Of The Elements

What are the general consequences of my hypothesis?

It:

• takes account of the formations of stars in the nebulae.
• explains a very remarkable circumstance which could be demonstrated by the analysis of stellar spectra.

it concerns the quantitative composition of matter, or the relative abundance of the various chemical elements, which is the same in the Sun, in the stars, on the Earth and in the meteorites.

Products of the disintegration of an atom are naturally found in very definite proportions, determined by the laws of radioactive transformations.

COSMIC RAYS

Finally, we said in the beginning that the radiations produced during the disintegrations, during the first period of expansion, could explain cosmic rays.

These rays are endowed with an energy of several billion electron-volts. We know no other phenomenon currently taking place which may be capable of such effects.

That which these rays resemble most is the radiation produced during present radioactive distintegrations, but the individual energies brought into play are enormously greater. All that agrees with rays of superradioactive origin. But it is not only by their quality that these rays are remarkable, it is also by their total quantity.

In fact, it is easy, from their observed density which is given in ergs per centimeter, to deduce their density of energy by dividinf by c, then their density in grams per cubic centimeter by dividing by c.

Thus one finds 10(34) gram per cubic centimeter, about one ten-thousandth the present density of the matter existing in the form of stars. it seems impossible to explain such an energy which represents one part in ten thousand of all existing energy, if these rays had not been produced by a process which brought into play all existing matter.

In fact, this energy, at the moment of its formation, must have been at least ten times greater, since a part of it was able to be absorbed and the remainder has been reduced as a result of the expansion of space. The total intensity observed for cosmic rays is therefore just about that which might be expected.

CONCLUSiON

The purpose of any cosmogonic theory is to seek out ideally simple conditions which could have initiated the world and from which, by the play of recognized physical forces, that world, in all its complexity, may have resulted.

I believe that my hypothesis satisfies the rules of the game.

It does not appeal to any force which is not already known. it accounts for the actual world in all its complexity.

By a single hypothesis it explains stars arranged in galaxies within an expanding universe as well as those local exceptions, the clusters of nebulae. Finally, it accounts for that mighty phenomenon, the ultrapenetrating rays.

They are truly cosmic, they testify to the primeval activity of the cosmos. in their course through wonderfully"empty space, during billions of years, they have brought us evidence of the superradioactive age, they are a sort of fossil rays which tell us what happened when the stars first appeared.

This hypothesis of the primeval atom is not yet proved.