What is the source of heat which the sun and the stars are continually squandering? The answer given is almost unanimous... the gravitational energy … - Arthur Eddington

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What is the source of heat which the sun and the stars are continually squandering? The answer given is almost unanimous... the gravitational energy converted as the star steadily contracts. ...Lord Kelvin showed that this hypothesis, due to Helmholtz, necessarily dates the birth of the sun about 20,000,000 years ago; and he made strenuous efforts to induce geologists and biologists to accommodate... But... outrageous violations of this limit have prevailed. ...Sir 's theory of the earth-moon system, to the present Lord Raleigh's ...age of terrestrial rocks from occluded helium, and to all modern discussions of the statistical equilibrium of the stellar system. No one seems to have any hesitation... in carrying back the history of the earth long before the supposed date of formation of the solar system... in some cases... this appears... justified by experimental evidence... difficult to dispute. Lord Kelvin's date of the creation of the sun is treated with no more respect than Archbishop Ussher's.

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About Arthur Eddington

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington OM FRS (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour.

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Also Known As

Native Name: sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Alternative Names: Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington Sir Arthur Eddington
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Additional quotes by Arthur Eddington

We have been pulling at the wrong end of the tangle, which has to be unravelled by a different approach. But after a general agreement with observation is established, and the tangle begins to loosen, we should always make ready for the next knot.

The appearance of a four-dimensional world is due to Minkowski. Einstein showed the relativity of the familiar quantities of physics; Minkowski showed how to recover the absolute by going back to their four-dimensional origin and searching more deeply.

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