The Foundations of Science · Henri Poincaré
THE MILKY WAY AND THE THEORY OF GASES
If on the contrary, there is rotation, we shall find an analogous configuration of equilibrium with four curved rays, equal to each other and intersecting at 90°, and if the rotation is sufficiently rapid, this equilibrium is stable. I am not in position to make this more precise: enough if you see that these spiral forms may perhaps some day be explained by only the law of gravitation and statistical consideration recalling those of the theory of gases. What has been said of internal currents shows it is of interest to discuss systematically the aggregate of proper motions; this may be done in a hundred years, when the second edition is issued of the chart of the heavens and compared with the first, that we now are making.
But, in conclusion, I wish to call your attention to a question, that of the age of the milky way or the nebulæ. If what we think we see is confirmed, we can get an idea of it. That sort of statistical equilibrium of which gases give us the model is established only in consequence of a great number of impacts. If these impacts are rare, it can come about only after a very long time; if really the milky way (or at least the agglomerations which are contained in it), if the nebulæ have attained this equilibrium, this means they are very old, and we shall have an inferior limit of their age. Likewise we should have of it a superior limit; this equilibrium is not final and can not last always. Our spiral nebulæ would be comparable to gases impelled by permanent motions; but gases in motion are viscous and their velocities end by wearing out. What here corresponds to the viscosity (and which depends upon the chances of impact of the molecules) is excessively slight, so that the present régime may persist during an extremely long time, yet not forever, so that our milky ways can not live eternally nor become infinitely old. And this is not all. Consider our atmosphere: at the surface must reign a temperature infinitely small and the velocity of the molecules there is near zero. But this is a question only of the mean velocity; as a consequence of impacts, one of these molecules may acquire (rarely, it is true) an enormous velocity, and then it will rush out of the atmosphere, and once out, it will never return; therefore our atmosphere drains off thus with extreme slowness. The milky way also from time to time loses a star by the same mechanism, and that likewise limits its duration.
Well, it is certain that if we compute in this manner the age of the milky way, we shall get enormous figures. But here a difficulty presents itself. Certain physicists, relying upon other considerations, reckon that suns can have only an ephemeral existence, about fifty million years; our minimum would be much greater than that. Must we believe that the evolution of the milky way began when the matter was still dark? But how have the stars composing it reached all at the same time adult age, an age so briefly to endure? Or must they reach there all successively, and are those we see only a feeble minority compared with those extinguished or which shall one day light up? But how reconcile that with what we have said above on the absence of a noteworthy proportion of dark matter? Should we abandon one of the two hypotheses, and which? I confine myself to pointing out the difficulty without pretending to solve it; I shall end therefore with a big interrogation point. However, it is interesting to set problems, even when their solution seems very far away.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.