50 Years Ago

Prof. L. Egyed has recently summarized a number of hypotheses concerning the expansion of the Earth, and has suggested that the Earth's radius is expanding at a rate of 0.5–1.0 mm per year. There appears to be a remarkably close agreement between the rate of increase of the Earth's radius and that of the universe according to Hubble's law. Using the at present accepted value for Hubble's constant, H = 100 km/s/megaparsec, which is 1.65 × 10−4 mm per year per mile, and substituting the value of the Earth's radius in the Hubble equation, υ = RH, we obtain a radial expansion for the Earth of 0.66 mm per year. While this agreement may be fortuitous it may suggest a fundamental concordance between expansion processes in the Earth's core and those responsible for the expansion of the universe.

From Nature 14 September 1963

100 Years Ago

In a paper on the psychology of insects, read before the General Malarial Committee at Madras in November, 1912, Prof. Howlett, after giving an account of experiments carried out by him on the response of insects to stimuli, comes to the conclusion that insects are to be regarded “not as intelligent beings consciously shaping a path through life, but as being in a sort of active hypnotic trance.” It is claimed that this view of insect-psychology opens up great possibilities in the study of insect carriers of disease, since “it is no intelligent foe we have to fight, but a mere battalion of somnambulists.” If we discover the stimuli or particular conditions which determine the actions of an insect, we can apply them to its undoing.

From Nature 11 September 1913