VOL.8. No. 10
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ESSAYS
2039
The administrative committee has enjoyed thc privilege of directing the essay contest for Mr. and Mrs. Francis P. Garvan and the American Chemical Society and relinquishes its task with the conviction that the wishes of the donors as expressed in their letter of June 1, 1923, to the Society have been fulfilled. COMMITTEE ON PRIZEESSAYS NEIL E. GORDON,Chairman LYMANC. NEWELL CHASH. HERTY PAULSMITH,Secretary
Eddington's Physical Conception of the End of the World. A physical conception of the end of the world formed the basis of the presidential address delivered by Sir Arthur Eddingon on January 5 before the Mathematical Association a t the London Day Training College. The world, or space-time as Sir Arthur Eddington called it, was shown to be a four-dimensional continuum, thus offering a choice of many directions to take in order to look for the end. From a space-dimensional point of vipw the world is s~herical:but then the time dimension must be considered too. This consideration formed the basis of the lecture. Entropy, that is, the measure of the disorganization by Sir Arthur as being t h e fundamental theme upon which to of a system, was suggested -work. Despite the phenomenon of evolution, whereby all types of systems have become and are still growing more highly organized, there is, on the whole, a generalloss of organization. Such ever-increasing organization will perforce swallow up finally the organization due t o evolution. Sir Arthur Eddingon emphasized this conception showing that finally the whole universe will reach a state of complete disorganization, a uniform mass in thermodynamic equilibrium. This would he the end of the world. He considered finally what such an end would be like; but, realizing that the doctrine of spherical space and the results connected with the expansion of the universe have become modified, he merely made one of several possible suggestions. Taking the widely supported hypothesis that matter slowly changes into radiation, he suggested that the world will finally become a ball of radiation, growing ever larger, with the radiation becoming thinner and assuming longer wave lengths. About every 1,500,000,000 years the radius would be doubled, and this increase would carry on in geometrical progression.-Nature Fish Blood Rich in Phosphorus. Studies upon the compositions of the blood of different animals which have just been completed a t Cornell University show that the blood of the lower forms such as fish and turtles contain nearly three times as much phosphorus as those of the higher mammals. Fish have long been rcputed to be high in phosphorus hut the various forms in the blood have not been studied previously. Most of the phosphorus of fish blood is concentrated in the red cells. This high phosphorus value for fish blood is interesting in the light of the meat diets used for rearing trout in most hatcheries. Brook trout grow to maturity upon food that is very rich in phosphonxs, such as beef Liver. One might expect bloods rich in phosphorus among the carnivorous fish but not among the omnivorous, such as carp. The bloods of both pike and carp were analyzed, however, and found t o be equally high.Science Service
