Abstract
THE fourth Riekman Godlee lecture was delivered at University College, London, by Sir Arthur Ed-dington on February 16, Lord Dawson of Perm presided, and paid a tribute to Rickman Godlee's great pioneer work in the surgery of the brain and to his wide range of interests in scientific work and in affairs. Sir Arthur Eddington took as his subject the “Constitution of the Stars”. He reminded the audience that the problem of the constitution of the stars was first set forth in a paper, with a somewhat strange and comprehensive title, published by Lane in 1869. Since then, many attempts have been made to compute the temperatures existing deep inside the huge celestial furnaces. Thus, in the case of the sun, whilst the measured temperature of the photosphere is six thousand degrees, the computed temperature at the centre is twenty million degrees. This central region is now considered to be constituted of swarms of protons and stripped atoms moving at speeds of hundreds of miles per second, of swarms of electrons moving at ten thousand miles per second, and an enormous quantity of X-radiation which is mainly responsible for the permanent shape of the sun. Because of its nature, the energy of this radiation can only leak away slowly, by a stepping-down process.
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Constitution of the Stars. Nature 133, 284–285 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133284d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133284d0