Word: shapleys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...brand-new magazine is on sale this week on Russia's newsstands. Title: Science and Religion. Editorial slant: religion ridiculed in village-atheist terms, scientists chided for any signs of backsliding from faithlessness. (One author accuses leftish U.S. Astronomer Harlow Shapley of attempting to reconcile God and the expanding universe, advises him: "Your hopes are vain, Professor Shapley!") The magazine's lead article is by Britain's spry old Philosopher-Mathematician Bertrand Russell, 87, who asks: "Has religion made a useful contribution to civilization?" His answer: No, except for helping to establish the calendar and inducing...
These "Lilliputian stars" do not glow like regular stars; the pressure and temperature inside them are not high enough to support the thermonuclear reactions that keep stars hot. But they need not be cold. "The heat to support life," said Shapley, "would come from their interiors, and they would not be dependent on a sun as we are. In such bodies, radioactive thorium or potassium might provide a source of energy...
When astronomers (or science-fiction writers) speculate about nonearthly kinds of life, they generally think of strange beings existing on planets revolving around a star that is at the proper distance to keep them reasonably warm. Astronomer Harlow Shapley, former head of the Harvard Observatory, has figured that there are probably 100,000 life-bearing planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Last week Shapley suggested that the universe may contain another class of celestial bodies that could sustain life. They are neither planets nor true stars, and are somewhere in between the two in size-perhaps 100 times bigger than...
...Shapley does not know how many such bodies exist in the Milky Way galaxy. They cannot be seen with the biggest telescopes because they give off no visible light, only a little infrared. But he suspects they may be even more numerous than visible stars...
Harvard professors who signed the paper were Edwin C. Kemble, professor of Physics, emeritus; Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, emeritus; Kenneth V. Thimann, professor of Biology; and Oscar Zarisk, professor of Mathematics...