Stars and atoms

‘STARS and Atoms’ was the title of an Evening Discourse given at the meeting of the British Association in Oxford in August 1926. In adapting it for publication the restrictions...

Finally I can show you the other method of ionizing atoms by battering of a more mechanical kind--in this case by the collision of a fast electron. In Fig. 6 a fast electron was...

Having obtained our theoretical curve, the first thing to do is to test it by observation. That is to say, we gather together as many stars as we can lay hands on for which both...

However, eighteen years later the Companion of Sirius was actually seen by Alvan Clark. This discovery was unique in its way; Clark was not looking at Sirius because he was inte...

The heavy nucleus, whether of hydrogen or helium, remains almost unshaken by the atomic vibration--almost, but not quite. At a later date Professor A. Fowler succeeded in reprod...

By Milne’s theory we can calculate the whole weight of the sun’s calcium chromosphere. Its mass is about 300 million tons. One scarcely expects to meet with such a trifling figu...

In an ordinary way you cannot tell the _real_ brightness of a light merely by looking at it. If it appears dim, that may mean either real faintness or great distance. At night t...

There seems to be no doubt that this radiation is travelling downwards from the sky. This is shown by measurements of its strength at different heights in the atmosphere and at...

The strange thing is that the condition of balance is reached when the central temperature is near 40 million degrees--the same whether the star is at the top, middle, or bottom...

The whole difficulty seems, however, to have been removed in a recent investigation by R. H. Fowler. He concludes unexpectedly that the dense matter of the Companion of Sirius h...