Statistics
Scientific paper
Aug 1932
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1932scimo..35..109o&link_type=abstract
The Scientific Monthly, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp. 109
Statistics
Scientific paper
FROM the relative content of helium and radium, Professor Paneth in Konigsberg has determined the age of a number of meteorites; for 24 different iron meteorites he found values ranging from 100 to 2,900 million years; for the Pultusk stone meteorites, the fall of which in 1868 had been well observed, he gave a preliminary value of 500 million years, which is probably a minimum value because of possible loss of helium in space, and in our museums for over 60 years. The Pultusk meteorite was certainly of interstellar origin, and judging from preliminary results of the Arizona meteor expedition, we may expect that at least several of the iron meteorites investigated by Paneth also did not belong to the solar system. That the age of all these objects is below 3,000 million years suggests a low age also for the stellar universe. This conclusion is strongly supported by other facts mentioned below. Statistics of the distribution of distances and relative magnitudes in wide double stars indicate that since their origin the masses of the stars can not have decreased appreciably, and that the drop in luminosity of the average star of the dwarf branch can not have exceeded half a magnitude since its origin, instead of the expected six magnitudes or more, while the most probable drop in the luminosity is zero. The distribution of luminosities of stars in globular clusters, notably the presence of high luminosity red super-giants, as pointed out by Shapley, leads practically to the same conclusion, namely, that stars of different spectral classes can not have evolved one from another, but must have been created simultaneously, and that their age is too short for any appreciable evolution to have taken place. Finally, the observed recession of the spiral nebulae, reflecting the phenomenon of the expanding universe, indicates a possible age for the extragalactic universe of a few thousand million years only. From all these facts we infer that probably the age of our universe does not differ very much from the age of the solar system, and that not very much more than 3,000 million years have elapsed since the spiral nebulae, the stars, and the star-dust (the meteors) were born out of the original parent system, which we call chaos because we do not know much about it.
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