Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
by Freeman J. Dyson
the chief
inlets of Soul in this age.
Energy is the only life and is
from the Body;
and Reason is the bound or outward
circumference of Energy.
Energy is Eternal Delight.
-WILLIA?I BLAKE,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
1793
FORM OF ENERGY
GRAVITATION
ENERGY OF ROTATION
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
10-6
10-3
SUNLIGHT
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
1-10
10-100
104
"ORDER OF MERIT" of the major forms of energy in the universe ranks the various en
ergy forms roughly according to their associ ated entropy per unit energy, expressed in units
of inverse electron volts. The entropy, which measures the degree of disorder associated
with a particular form of energy, varies approximately inversely with the temperature a sso
ciated with that energy form. In the cases of gravitation, rotation and orbital m otion there i s
n o asso c i ated temperature and hence the entropy is zero. Energy generally flows from
h igher levels to lower levels i n the table, that is, i n such a direction that the entropy in
creases. The c o s m i c microwave background radiation appears to be an ultimate heat sink;
no way is known in which this energy could be further degraded or converted into any other
form. The un iverse survives not by any inherent stab ility but by a succession of seemingly
acci dental "hangups," or obsta cles, usu ally arising fro m some quantitative feature of the
design of the universe, that act to arrest the n o rmal processes of the degradation of energy.
52
SIZE HANG UP, the first and most basic han gup that is built into
53
axy of the "open spiral" type. Galaxi es, planetary systems, double
stars and the rings o f Saturn are among the c elestial objects that
are sp ared temp orarily from the inevita ble gravitational collapse
by the spin han gup. This particular galaxy, desi gnated M 101, il.
54
TWO STELLAR POPULATIONS are characteristically present in spiral galaxies, the old
er stars forming a roughly spherical halo cloud and the younger stars formin g a compara
I
tively thin central disk. This photograph o f the spiral galaxy M 104, seen almost edge on,
gives a particularly clear view o f the two typ es o f stellar population. In our own galaxy
the arrangement is the same but the proportions are different. If our galaxy were seen
this way, the disk would look much brighter than that of M 1 04, the halo much fainter.
II II
Itt
SPECTROGRAMS of two stars in our galaxy, a h i gh-velocity halo star (second from top)
and a normal disk star (third from top) of approximately the same spectral type, were
made with the 120-inch telescope at the Lick Observato ry. The spectrum of the hi gh
velocity star, designated HD 140283, shows comparatively weak absorption lines for all the
elements except hydr o gen. The spectrum of the n ormal star, our own sun , contains numer
ous lines associated with the heavier elements, particularly carbon and iron. Since bydro.
gen burns to make carbon and iron but carbon and iron cannot burn to make hydro gen,
the objects in our galaxy with the least contamination of hydrogen by heavier elements
must be tbe oldest. Spectra at top and bottom provide b r i ght lines for reference purposes.
55
DURATION
STAGE
1. GRAVITAT IONAL
INITIALLY 600.
CONTRACTION
2. HYDROGEN
BURNING
DECREASING RAPIDLY TO .7
INCREASING SLOWLY TO 3
3. RESUMED
GRAVITATIONAL
CONTRACTION
3-10
OF CORE
4. HELIUM A ND
CARBON BURNING
5. FINAL
GRAVITATIONAL
10-1.000. FLUCTUATING
IN COMPLICATED FASHION
13 MILLION YEARS
1.000-.01
INFINITE
CONTRA CTION
6. W HITE-DWARF
PHASE
EFFECT OF THERMONUCLEAR HANGUP on the life of the sun is evident in this table,
which g i ves the sun's energy output at various stages in its evolution in units o f the pres
ent solar lumin osity (2.10H3 ergs per secon d). Only the first three sta ges are known well
enough to he a ccurately computed. The deta ils o f sta ges 4 and 5 are uncertain be cause the
mechanisms of conv ective instability in the sun's interior and of mass loss at the surfa c e
a r e n o t completely understo o d. During sta ge 4 the s u n w i l l probably pass through a "re d
giant" phase, and during sta ge 5 through a "pla netary nehula" phase. What is certain is
that in stages 4 and 5 the energy output will be high and the durati o n short c ompared w ith
the energy o utput and duration of sta ge 2. If it were not for the thermonuclear han gup of
sta ge 2, the sun would have squandered all its energy and reached sta g e 6 long a g o , prob
ably i n less than a billion years. As matters stand, the sun is only h alfway through stage 2.
PROTON
PROTON
PROTON
+
DEUTERON
HELIUM 3
+
PROTON
HELIUM 2
NEUTRINO
NEUTRINO
DEUTERON
+
DEUT ERON
POSITRON
o
NEUTRON
PHOTON
P OSITRON
HELIUM 2
DEUTERON
SOME FUSION REACTIONS discussed in this article are depicted schematically here. In
the sun (top) ordin ary hydrogen nuclei (protons) fuse to form a deuteron (a proton and
a neutron) plus a positron and a neutrino. In a thermon uclear bomb (second from top)
two heavy hydrogen iso topes, in this case both de uterons, fuse by the stron g interaction
process to form a helium3 nucleus plus a ne utron. The protonproton reaction proceeds
about 1018 times more slowly than the c orrespo n ding deuterondeuteron rea ction. If a he
l ium2 nucleus could exist, the proto nproton reaction would yield a helium2 n ucleus plus
a photon (third from top), and the helium2 nucleus would in turn sp ontaneously decay
into a deuteron, a positron a n d a ne utrino (fourth from top). As a consequence there would
b e n o weakinteraction hangup, and essentially all of the hydrogen existing in the universe
would have been burned to helium even before the first galaxies had started to condense.
56
fissionable nuclei
fore these nuclei can split spontane ously their surface must be
parameter
x,
57
ANCIENT EVIDENCE that a locally vi olent environment existed in our galaxy immedi
ately before the birth of the solar system is provided by photographs such as this one,
which was made by P. B . Price of the University o f C alifornia at B erkeley. The photo graph
shows radiation damage in the form of fission-fra gment tracks made visible by etching in a
crystal from a very anc ient meteorite. Meteorites of thi s type do not contain en ough urani
um o r thorium t o acc ount for the fission tracks. Instead the tracks appear to be the prod
ucts of the spontaneous fission of the nucleus plutonium 2 44, which has a half-life of o nly
80 million years, a period that is very short compared with tbe age o f the earth. Tberefore
the meteorites must b e coeval with the solar system, and the plutonium must bave been
made close to, in both time and space, the event that gave birth to the solar system.
58
RECENT EVIDENCE o f violent events in parts o f the universe other than our own is con
tained in this cloudchamber photo graph o f a primary c o smic ray track, obtained at an al
titude o f 17,200 feet on Mount Chacaltaya in B o livia b y Alfred Z . Hendel and his colleagues
at the University o f Michigan. The cloud chamber contained 1 7 iron plates, e a ch half an
inch thick. The cosmic ray, in this case a high-energy p roton, entered the chamber from
the top and passed through five plates before colliding with a n iron nucleus in the sixth
plate, producing a shower o f secondary reaction products, mainly pi mesons. The energy
o f the incoming proton, approximatel y 1,100 billion electron volts, was measured by means
o f a detector mounted below the cloud chamber. Although it is not understood in detail
wbere c o sm i c rays come from, they are known to carry about as much energy as starl i ght.
59