ROCK OLDER THAN EARTH EXHIBITED BY SHAPLEY

A stone that is thought to the billions of years older than the stones of the earth's crust, older, indeed, than the earth itself, and whose secrets are the same as the ultimate secrets of the origin and existence of the material universe, was exhibited last Wednesday night by Professor Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Astronomical Observatory, in the second of a series of five lectures in the new Commerce Hall Auditorium of the College of the city of New York.

Fell in Poland

The stone was one that fell 60 years ago in Central Poland, after travelling, it is estimated, for indefinitely more than ten thousand million years at a hyperbolic speed across interstellar space. This rate was about 35 miles a second; it and the hundred thousand others that came with it in that remarkable shower overtook the earth, which was moving about 20 miles a second. In his speech, Professor Shapley said that "something of the nature of the material universe in those times before the earth and other planets were born can be determined by the study of such ancient meteoric stones, and particularly by the scientific study of the shooting stars that flash by the hundred every second into the earth's atmosphere".

Study Shooting Stars

In his lecture he took up in detail the sub-classifications in that part of the scheme which runs from electrons to meteorites, which is called the Microcosmos. The subject most emphasized in the lecture was the great importance of the study of shooting stars. He listed and described many problems towards which important contributions can be made by the careful scientific study of meteors and meteorites. "Studies of the brightness of shooting stars", he said. "Indicate that the earth's atmosphere 50 miles above the surface is of about the same temperature as at the surface itself. Further knowledge of the upper atmosphere will come through theoretical studies and observations of the brightness of meteors".