Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 130: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

128 jammed together under such appalling violence that it lessened the external pressures and energy-intensities to force those nuclei together. Some- where, somewhen, the intensity and density of energy-matter must have been so inconceivably great that the violence of the atomic fission bomb would have represented a cooling, expanding decrease of violence! In that environment, uranium, instead of fissioning to barium and xenon, was squeezed into being by pressures and cataclysm sufficient to force barium and xenon into one! From that ancient center of in- conceivable violence came uranium, iron, all the heavy elements that no star can produce. All the unstable elements, like uranium, thorium, and the others must have existed only, and temporarily, since that time. Because they “are temporary and radioactive, we can form an estimate of how long ago that time was. A dozen lines of evidence suggest some- thing about four billion years ago— which checks moderately well among ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION different indications as the time at which the universe exploded into being. There could have been no suns, no planets, no life before that time. Our Sun and our Earth, then, are about as old as any existing in all the universe. Man is not a latecomer in the universe; his world started even with a billion others. The remaining questions, however, are two: does evolution always proceed at the same, or approximately the same pace? And—the most recent evidence suggests Man, modern Homo sapiens, has been on Earth for approximately four hundred thousand years. Did other intelligent races dawdle in changeless barbarism for three hundred ninety thousand years after they appeared? After all, two hundred thousand years of civilization would be time for quite a bit of advancement—though even two hun- dred thousand years is an inappreciable percentage of error in the total time- scale we’re considering! THE EDITOR. — American Pagazines — American publications, if they are of a technical or educational nature, may still be obtained over here by means of an annual subscription. Here are just a few of the many available: Annual Rate HOBBY DIGEST - - - - - = 11/6 FLYING MODELS - - - - - 12/6 HOME CRAIG. «2. -*- = 18/- SCIENCE & SOCIETY- - - - 21/6 THE HING “= <6 oe Ss 25/- SCIENCE OF MIND - - - - 27/- Likt.é HEALTH -~-. - .-0-5:5 rae MODEL AIRPLANE NEWS- - 28/- SPEED AGE “YS be 29/- All prices include postage. Annual Rate POPULAR SCIENCE - - - - 30/6 SPORTS AFIELD- - - - = - 30/6 RADIO-ELECTRONICS - - - 32/6 POPULAR MECHANICS - - - 32/6 ETUDE - ----+--- =. - 34/- PHOTOGRAPHY - - - = - = 37/6 SKY & TELESCOPE - - - - 40/- MUSICAL AMERICA - - - = 50/- NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - - 60/- Kindly send remittance with order. ATLAS PUBLISHING & DISTRIBUTING CO. LTD. 18 Bride Lane, London, E.C.4 0 ssl ssl: comilclookks.c©