Word: lyttleton
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...Physicist Raymond A. Lyttleton of Cambridge University proposes a return to the wrinkle theory of mountain building-but with a difference. The earth was cool and solid when it was formed, says Lyttleton; then radioactivity gradually heated its rocky material. A few billion years ago, the earth's central core got hot enough to change from a plastic solid to a true liquid. Under the enormous pressure that exists near the center of the earth, liquid rock is more compressible than solid rock. So when the core liquefied, it was squeezed into a smaller amount of space, allowing...
...Lyttleton figures that the earth's compressible liquid core, which can be studied by means of earthquake waves, has caused the earth to shrink about 400 miles in diameter. Some 20 million square miles of crust have been tucked away in mountainous folds and wrinkles. How long this process will continue, Lyttleton does not know. But mountains are still rising, and Lyttleton estimates that if the entire earth were to liquefy, it would lose another 50 miles of diameter...
Last spring, British Mathematicians Raymond A. Lyttleton and Hermann Bondi attributed the expansion of the universe to the presence of thin hydrogen gas between the galaxies, suggesting that the hydrogen atoms may have slight positive charges and therefore push one another apart by electrostatic repulsion (TIME, June 22). A still-later theory comes from Professors Thomas Gold of Cornell and Fred Hoyle of Cambridge. England. Gold and Hoyle also think that the mysterious force comes from intergalactic hydrogen gas, but they argue that its urge to expand comes from high temperature, not from electrical repulsion...
Gold and Hoyle, like Lyttleton...
...Lyttleton and Bondi challenge physicists to devise experiments that can measure the charges of protons and electrons with new precision. If the charges prove to differ, the difference will explain both the expanding universe and cosmic rays...